Survival and Family
by Sanura Bey
Summary: Jackie was part of a small group consisting of a father and son, Morgan and Duane. All she wants to do is find her father and brother and when Rick leaves for Atlanta, she found her way to them. She was taught to be a survivor by her apocalypse nut father and now she's ready for what the world throws at her. But is she ready to let a certain redneck past all her walls? Daryl/OC
1. Days Gone By

I sat in the passenger seat of the police car as my one companion pulled to the side of the road next to a turned over rig. The car was low on gas and once we'd found the closest station he pulled over as close to it as he could. He popped the trunk and we got out of the car, him in his uniform and me in my jeans and red low cut tank. My black hair was pulled back in a high ponytail so it stayed out of my storm gray eyes. He grabbed the lone gas can from the trunk and we quietly walked to the gas station staring at the clothes and cars around us. Nothing I could see was something we needed so we would leave it all behind once we got what we needed. I looked inside some of the cars and saw the rotting dead with flies buzzing around and couldn't decide if they were the lucky ones or not. We walked to the station only to see a sign 'NO GAS'. He sighed and turned to look at the cars piled around us.

"I'll see if anything we need is here, you go siphon some gas." I told him before heading to the station to see if there was any food or medical supplies that hadn't already been taken. I stopped and looked behind me at the sound of shuffling footsteps. I turned and watched him kneel down and look under one of the cars before jumping back up. After a short time I saw a little blonde girl walking away from us holding onto her teddy bear.

"Little girl?" he called to her moving to follow her as she walked. "I'm a policeman. Little girl." She stopped walking and just stood with her back to us. "Don't be afraid, okay? Little girl." She turned and we saw she was missing most of her right cheek and jaw showing us her green braces and her green eyes were rimmed in red and an injury on her left shoulder. She started shuffling towards him and I quickly pulled out my knife and she started to move quicker. He pulled out his gun and shot her in the head and she fell back. I sighed and put my knife away.

"You're getting quicker." I told him.

"She was just a kid." He said shocked.

"Doesn't matter. She was a Walker. She was already dead."

* * *

><p>"We'll be back in a few weeks. Take care of each other and if anything happens…" my dad started saying.<p>

"Go to the bunker, we know." I laughed at him. My dad was a survival nut and told my mom, brother and I the same thing every time he left the farm even though he'd trained both my brother and I how to survive if anything happened. This was the first time my brother was going with him and he was excited.

"You're just going to the farmers markets. Nothing's going to happen, now go." My mom told him giving him a kiss before giving my brother a hug. I hugged my dad tightly.

"Take care of your mother Jackie." He told me quietly. While he knew we were ready for the end of days my mother wasn't fully ready I suppose. Sure she supported him but she never thought that the human race was going to go anywhere.

"I know dad. Take care of James." I paused a moment before voicing my concern about him leaving. "Don't go all the way to Atlanta this time. I've got a bad feeling."

"Don't worry baby girl, James and I will be fine. You'll see." He told me as they got into his truck. "Bye Mel." He said.

"Bye Jack." My mom and I waved to them we they left before going back to work, not knowing we wouldn't see them again.

* * *

><p>I was gathering food for the group of three I was part of when I heard a gunshot ring out. I immediately got up and ran to where they were to see them leaning over someone who'd been knocked out.<p>

"Who is it?" I asked looking at the scruffy man lying on the ground.

"I don't know, but he's injured. Let's get him to a house for the night." Morgan said and we made our way to an empty house and set everything up for our protection including tying the man up to the sole bed in the house. I pulled some of the medical supplies I'd picked up and changed the bandages on him trying to inspect the wound at the same time. The wound didn't look like a bite, but we couldn't be certain anymore. Once I was done I checked on his nose.

"It's not broken, just some busted capillaries." I said.

"Good. We don't need to waste meds." He said as I finished my work and went to the bowl of water he'd set up on a dresser for me. I heard movement on the bed and turned to see the man awake and looking at Duane who was holding a baseball bat.

"I changed your bandage for you." I said, drawing his eyes to me.

"It was pretty rank." Morgan told him. "What was it? The wound?"

"Gunshot." The man told us and I breathed a slight sigh of relief.

"Gunshot. What else? Anything?" Morgan asked him.

"Gunshot ain't enough?" he asked us.

"Not anymore it ain't." I told him.

"Look, I ask and you answer. It's common courtesy, right? Did you get bit?" Morgan asked leaning close to the man's face.

"Bit?" he asked confused making me give him a confused look. How could he not know?

"Bit. Chewed. Maybe scratch? Anything like that." Morgan explained.

"No, I got shot." He repeated.

"Just shot?" Morgan asked him.

"As far as I know." The man told us. Morgan sat on the side of the bed next to him and tried to feel his forehead but the man just leaned back away from him.

"Hey… Just let me…" Morgan started saying before he felt for the fever. "Feels cooler now. Fever would have killed you by now."

"I don't think I have one." The man told us.

"Trust me you'd know if you had this one." I told him.

"Be hard to miss." Morgan told him before he pulled out a knife and showed it to the man. "Take a moment, eh? Look how sharp it is. You try anything… I will kill you with it, and don't you think I won't." the man stayed still as Morgan cut him free. "Come on up when you're able. Come on." Morgan, Duane and I left the room to start supper.

* * *

><p>Once supper was ready Morgan served it out of the can it was in and into three bowls as the man walked towards us. He moved into an adjoining room and looked around momentarily.<p>

"This place… It's Fred and Cindy Drake's." he told us.

"Never met them." Morgan said putting his hands in his pockets.

"I've been here. This is their place." He said.

"It was empty when we got here." Morgan told him as the man moved to peel the blankets on the window back. "Don't do that. They'll see the light. There's more of them out there than usual. I never should have fired that gun today. The sound draws them, now they're all over the street. Stupid… using a gun… It all happened so fast… I didn't think." Morgan said as the three of us sat at the table.

"You panicked. It happens." I told him.

"You shot that man today." The man said walking to us.

"Man?" Morgan asked him.

"It weren't no man." Duane told him.

"What the hell was that out of your mouth just now?" Morgan asked his son.

"It wasn't a man." Duane corrected himself.

"You shot him. In this street, out front, a man." The man said.

"Friend, you need glasses. It was a Walker." Morgan corrected him. The man looked at us confused. "Come on. Sit down, before you fall down. Here. Eat." Morgan said as I filled another bowl with supper. The man sat next to me and was about to dig in when Duane stopped him.

"Daddy… Blessing…" he said.

"Yeah." Morgan said as the three of us joined hands. We looked at the newest member of our group and Morgan and I held our hands out for him to take. "Father, we thank thee for this food… Thy blessings… We ask you to watch over us in these crazy days. Amen."

"Amen." Duane repeated. They knew I wouldn't say anything and they never said anything to me.

"Hey, mister, do you even know what is going on?" Morgan asked after a moment of silent eating.

"I woke up today. In a hospital. Came home, that's all I know." He told us.

"But you know about the dead people, right?" Morgan asked him.

"Yeah, I saw a lot of that. Out on the loading dock, hauling trucks." He said and held back a laugh at his answer. Those weren't the dead we had to worry about.

"No… Not the ones they put down… The one's they didn't. The Walkers. Like the one I shot today. Cause he would have ripped into you. Try to eat you, take him some flesh at least. But I guess if this is the first you're hearing, I know how it must sound…" Morgan explained to him.

"They're out there now, in the street?" he asked us.

"Yeah. They're even more active after dark sometimes. Maybe it's the cool air or… Hell, maybe it's just me firing up that gun today. But we'll be fine long as we stay quiet. Probably wander off by morning." Morgan told him.

"It's the gun that brought them in." I said ignoring all the eyes on me.

"Well, listen… One thing I do know… Don't you get bit! We saw your bandage and that's why we were afraid of. Bites kill you. The fever… burns you out. But then after a while… You come back." Morgan warned and I paused in my eating.

"Seen it happen…" Duane told him after a moment.

"Almost twice." I chimed in before we all continued our meal in silence.

"My name's Rick." He introduced finally.

"I'm Morgan. This is my son, Duane."

"Jackie."

"The three of you are family?" Rick asked us.

"My mom was bit and I don't know where my dad and brother are. They left shortly before all this shit happened." I told him.

* * *

><p>After supper, Duane was sleeping next to his Morgan as Rick and I laid on our own beds.<p>

"Carl… He your son? Well you… you said his name today…" Morgan told him.

"He's a little younger than your boy." Rick told him.

"And he's with his mother?" Morgan asked.

"I hope so." Rick said.

"Dad?" Duane said waking up slightly.

"Yeah?" Morgan asked him.

"Did you ask him?" Duane asked and Morgan chuckled slightly.

"Your gunshot… We got a little bet going. My boy says you're a… bank robber…" Morgan told him.

"Yeah… That's me. Deadly as Dillinger. Kapow." Rick chuckled. "Sheriff's deputy."

"Uh-huh." Morgan said staring at him for a moment. Suddenly a car alarm from outside started going off. Duane jumped up in a panic and Morgan stopped him from going too far. "Hey, it's ok, daddy's here. It's nothing. One of them must've bumped a car." Morgan explained to Rick.

"You sure?" Rick asked us.

"Happened once before. Went off a few minutes." Rick got up and started going to the window with me close behind him. "Get the light, Dwayne." We dimmed the lights so we could look outside to see several of them walking around outside. "It's the blue one, down the street. Same one as last time. I think we're ok."

"That noise… Will it bring more of them?" Rick asked.

"Yeah but there's nothing we can do about it now. We can only wait them out till morning." I told him. We watched them and I took a deep breath as _she_ crossed our line of vision.

"She's here." Duane said.

"Don't look. Get away from the windows. I said go! Come on!" Morgan told him. Duane went to their bed and began to cry with Morgan following him to comfort him. "Come on, quiet. Shh, shh…" Rick followed her towards the door and looked out the peephole. "It's ok, here. Cry into the pillow. Do you remember? Shh." I sat on my bed as the doorknob started to turn only to be followed by Rick did the same slowly and quietly. "She, uh… She died in the other room, on that bed… Nothin' I can do about it here… That fever, man… Her skin gave off heat like a furnace… Should have put her down, I should have put her down, I know that, but… You know what… I just didn't have it in me… She's the mother of my child." Morgan mourned as we watched the doorknob as it continued to turn left and right.

* * *

><p>The next morning, Rick, Morgan, Duane and I were slow to leave the house after we found Rick some clothes watchful of the Walkers.<p>

"Are we sure… they're dead?" Rick asked us. "I have to ask, just one more time."

"They're dead. Except for something in the brain. That's why it's gotta be the head." Morgan told him as we walked closer to the one who was lying up against the fence post. He started to get up and walked to Rick once he smelt we were nearby. Rick smashed it in the head several times with a baseball bat before he fell to the ground. "Y'all all alright?" Morgan asked him as we watched him.

"Need a moment." He told us. We gave him a moment before we walked with him to his house.

"They're alive. My wife and son. At least they were when they left." Rick told us as we walked in.

"How can you know? By the look of this place…" Morgan told him. The house was ransacked a long time ago.

"I found empty drawers in the bedroom. They packed some clothes. Not a lot. But enough to travel." Rick told us.

"We've gone into houses and stole clothes before." I told him, proving just how easy it was now and days.

"Rick: You see the framed photos on the walls?" we looked around at Rick's question and I shook my head. "Neither do I. Some random thief took those too, you think? My photo albums, family pictures, all gone." Morgan started to laugh lightly.

"Photo albums… My wife… Same thing… Here I am, packing survival gear, she's grabbing photo alb…" he stopped and tried to control his pain.

"They're in Atlanta, I'll bet." Duane told him.

"That's right." Morgan agreed.

"Why there?" Rick asked us.

"Refugee settle. Huge, when they said it, before the broadcast stopped. Military protection, food, shelter… They told people to go there. Said to be safest." Morgan explained.

"Plus they got that disease place." Duane said.

"Center for Disease Control. Said they were working on how to solve this thing." Morgan told him.

"That's where my dad and brother were headed before the world ended. That's where they'll be after." I said. Rick moved quickly and grabbed a set of keys and we were off again.

* * *

><p>We all entered the sheriff's office and walked to the locker room where Rick turned on the shower.<p>

"Gas and light have been down for maybe a month." Morgan told him as Rick waited for the water to go from cold to hot.

"Station got its own propane system. Pilot's still on." He told us. I instantly put my hand in the water and smiled. We had hot water. There was a section still connected yet curtained off so I grabbed clean clothes and my shower supplies from my bag and went to the curtained area and started the shower. I watched in bliss as the water went from murky to clear as I cleaned my body and hair.

"Oh, my Lord." Morgan said.

"Hot water!" Duane cried out in happiness and I laughed at them.

"Ah! That feels good, right?" Morgan asked.

"Feels like heaven." I called to them.

"Bring it around, bring it, bring it around, bring it, bring it bring it around, uh uh!" Duane sang making me laugh. "Yea. I'm wet. Take that. What? Whoo!"

After our showers we all dried off and got dressed. I had to wait for the men to finish since I was in a small section of the same room and I really didn't want to see anything.

"Duane… Dressing rooms back there." Rick told the boy.

"What you say, Duane?" Morgan asked him.

"Thank you." Duane said before I heard his footsteps echo away from the three of us.

"Mhm." Morgan said.

"Atlanta sounds like a good deal. Safer anyway. People…" Rick said to us.

"That's where we were heading. Things got crazy. Man, you won't believe. The panic… Streets won't fit to be on, and then when we got out to the country we found Jackie and her mother gathering food and going down to their bunker. They let us in and helped us out. When the food became harder and harder to access we decided it was time to move on. A week later Melinda, her mother, was bit. We waited the fever out and Jackie put her down with her knife before we moved on again. We made it here when well… My wife… couldn't travel. No, not with our hurt, so we had to find a place to lay low. And then, after she died… We just stayed hunkered down. I guess Duane and I just froze in place dragging Jackie down with us.

"Plan to move on?" Rick asked him.

"Haven't worked up to it yet." Morgan told him.

"If you're going to Atlanta, I'm going with you." I told Rick and both men were silenced for a moment.

"Know how to shoot?" he asked me.

"My dad was one of those end of the world nuts. Taught my brother and I had to do whatever we needed to do to survive." I told him.

"Okay then." Rick said.

* * *

><p>We opened the gun area and looked at all the weapons now at our disposal.<p>

"A lot of its gone missing." Rick told us as he sorted through what was left.

"Dad, can I learn to shoot?" Duane asked Morgan as we started going through the guns. "I'm old enough."

"Hell yes you're going to learn. But we gotta do it carefully, teach you to respect the weapon." Morgan told him.

"That's right. It's not a toy. You pull the trigger, you have to mean it. Always remember that, Duane." Rick told him.

"Yes, sir." Duane said.

"Here. Go load up." Morgan told his son.

"Take that one. Nothing fancy. Scope's accurate." Rick told Morgan as we separated the weapons and ammo.

* * *

><p>Once we were outside Rick unlocked a police car for the two of us to take with us since we only had a few working vehicles.<p>

"Conserve your ammo. Goes faster than you think. Especially at target practice." Rick told them.

"Duane." Morgan called.

"Yeah?"

"Take this to the car." Morgan gave Duane the guns for the two of them and Duane took them to the car.

"You sure you won't come along?" I asked Morgan. We'd been through so much together: My mother's death, his wife's death, and being on the road for a length of time taking care of one another no matter what.

"A few more days… By the end, Duane will know how to shoot and I won't be so rusty." Morgan said. Rick went to the car and pulled out a walkie-talkie and gave it to Morgan.

"You got one battery. I'll turn mine on, a few minutes every day at dawn. You get up there, that's how you find us." Rick told him.

"You thinking ahead." Morgan sad.

"Can't afford not to. Not anymore." I reminded him.

"Look, just one thing. They may not seem like much one at a time… but in a group all round up and hungry… You two better watch your asses." Morgan told us and I smiled at him.

"You too." Rick told him.

"You a good man, Rick. I hope you'll find your wife and son. Jackie, I hope you find your family." Morgan told us.

"Thanks Morgan." I said before I hugged him.

"Be seeing you, Duane. Take care of your old man." Rick told him as they shook hands.

"Yes, sir." Duane said before I hugged him tightly. Before we could leave, I noticed Morgan looking over our shoulders and I turned to see a Walker.

"Leon Basset? Didn't think much of him. Careless and dumb, but he doesn't deserve this." Rick said watching the Walker.

"You know they'll hear the shot." Morgan told him.

"Let's not be here when they'll show up." Rick said going to the Walker.

"Let's go, son. Come on." They both climbed into their vehicle as I got into the police car. I watched Rick pull out his Colt Python and shoot him in the head, killing him. He jogged back to me and climbed in the car before following Morgan out of the small parking area we were in. As they drove on way Morgan honked lightly three times and as we went the other Rick bleeped the siren twice. Goodbye. We didn't drive long before Rick pulled over.

"What are we doing here?" I asked him.

"There's something I have to do." He told me. I followed him out of the car and into a park area when I noticed a trail of depressed grass. We followed it only to see a legless Walker trying to crawl. She spotted us as Rick kneeled next to her and she tried to reach us. "I'm sorry this happened to you." He told her before he pulled out his Python and put the legless woman down.

"You can't apologize to every Walker you put down. You'd be apologizing so damn much you won't be able to kill them." I said before walking away. I might have been harsh but he was still like a baby in this world and I'd been living in it since day one.

* * *

><p>Later, as Rick drove down the road he thought it would be best to broadcast on the radio over an emergency channel to try and reach someone.<p>

"Broadcasting on emergency channel. We'll be approaching Atlanta on Highway 85. Anybody reads, please respond. Hello. Hello. Can anybody hear my voice? Anybody out there? Anybody hears me, please respond. Hello, can you hear my voice?" Rick said into the radio only to receive static each time.

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, in a camp not far from Atlanta their C.B. started going off and everyone who was there gathered around.<p>

"Hello? Hello? Can anybody hear my voice?" Rick called over the channel, his voice slightly distorted. A young blond woman rushed to the radio and picked up the microphone and called out to him.

"Hey? Hello?"

"Can you hear my voice?" Rick asked once more.

"Yes, I can hear you. You're coming through. Over." She told him.

"Anybody who reads, please respond. Broadcasting on emergency channel. We'll be approaching Atlanta on Highway 85. Anybody reads, please respond." He said, not having heard the young woman's response.

"We're just outside the city. Damnit. Hello? Hello? He couldn't hear me. I couldn't warn him." She told the people around her.

"Try to raise him again." One of the elderly men in the camp told her before seeing their current leader walk towards them. "Come on, son. You know best how to work this thing." The young man swung the ax he'd been holding down on the stop the radio was on and took the microphone from the young woman.

"Hello, hello, is the person who calls still on the air? This is officer Shane Walsh, broadcasting a person unknown, please respond." Shane waited a moment before dropping his head in defeat. "He's gone."

"There are others. It's not just us." A brunette mother said looking to their leader.

"Yeah, We knew there would be, right, that's why we let the CB on." Shane reminded her.

"Lots of good it's been doing. And I've been saying for a week, we ought to put signs up on 85 to warn people away from the city." She reminded him.

"Folks got no idea what they're getting into." The young blonde said.

"We don't have enough time." Shane told both women.

"I think we need to make time." The mother told him.

"Yeah, that, uh… That's a luxury we can't afford. We are surviving here. We are day to day." Shane said, not really needing to remind anyone of that fact.

"Wnd who the hell would you propose to send?" the elderly gentlemen asked the mother.

"I'll go. Give me a vehicle." She said.

"I'd go with her." A young man offered with his father standing next to him.

"Nobody goes anywhere without someone who can work a gun or arrows, you know that." Shane reminded them. The mother stormed past him as the father denied his son the chance to go.

"Yes, sir." The mother said angrily as her son started to follow her, but Shane held him back.

"Hey, hey, hey, come on, take a sit, buddy. You're alright, go on, you're alright." Shane then took off after the boy's mother as he sat on a log.

"I told you not to get involved with their argument." The father of the young man who offered to go with the mother reminded his son, his storm gray eyes flashing with worry for him.

"I just want to help dad." The boy told his father.

"The way you can help, James, is by taking watch and keeping the camp safe from Walkers." His father told him.

"I wanna do more." James told his father.

"Then help the women with the laundry." His father told him and James gave him a look. "Then don't complain. Come help me and Shane get firewood." Both James and his father went back to the woods and started collecting what they could get.

"Do you think mom and Jackie are alive?" James asked. The moment he and his father found out about the Walkers on their way to one of the markets he couldn't help but have the women in his family on his mind.

"You know your sister, she's a survivor and she wouldn't let anything happen to your mom if she could help it. We'll see them again." Jake told his son as they continued their job.

* * *

><p>In the police car, Rick pulled out a photograph of his family off of the visor. They all seemed so happy and he could only hope that Lori and Carl were safe wherever they were. He placed the photo in his shirt pocket before we got out of the car. We hadn't managed to get any gas at the station earlier so now the car was running on fumes and we had no way to fill her up. Rick grabbed the gas can and we made our way down the road to find a way to fill up the car so we could continue our journey. A couple miles down we came by a quiet house.<p>

"Hello? Police officer out here. Can I borrow some gas?" Rick called to them.

"First of all, stop hollering, you'll attract any and all Walkers nearby. Second, stop introducing yourself as a police officer, you'll make people think they law still exists in a lawless world." I told him as we walked up to the house.

"Why do you get to tell me what to do again?" he asked me as he knocked on the door. "Hello? Anybody home?"

"Cause I've lived in this world longer than you have." I reminded him.

"I thought I was older." He said as we moved to a window to see two dead bodies with flies buzzing all around them.

"Physically yes, you are. But with where we live now, you just woke into this world." I told him as we walked over to the truck that was sitting in the driveway. We looked inside hoping for some good luck, but there were no keys. Frustrated, we started to walk back when we noticed a horse. Rick walked towards it and tried to coax it into coming with us.

"Easy now, easy. I'm not gonna hurt you. Nothing like that. More like a proposal. Atlanta's just down the road ways. It's safe there. Food, shelter, people, other horses too, I bet. How's that sound?" he asked the horse. I watched as he wrapped the harness around the horses neck brought him out of the pen. "There we go. Good boy. Good boy. Now come with me. Come with me." We saddled the horse up and got on him with my in front leading the horse and Rick in back holding the guns. "Let's go easy, ok? I haven't done this for years." He told me.

"Then you better hold on cowboy." I told him before I immediately put the horse into a full gallop in the field with Rick begging me to go easy behind me.

* * *

><p>We eventually made our way to the outskirts of Atlanta. One side of the highway was empty while the other side of the highway is packed with several cars that have been wrecked or abandoned leaving he city. Rick and I continued to ride down the empty side of the highway to enter Atlanta, but I didn't like the look of this and I made my feelings known to Rick.<p>

"It should be fine." He told me.

"Then why was everyone driving away from the city not to the city?" I asked him and he answered with silence. We rode into the city and along the streets keeping my guard up for Walkers. The streets were abandoned and there was trash everywhere. I led the horse down the street where there were helicopters, cars, and even a tank wrecked along the road. We rode past a bus and some of the Walkers saw us. They got up and started to walk toward him. I tensed but Rick put his hands on my shoulders to try and calm me, not panicked.

"Steady. It's just a few. Nothing we can't outrun." He told me. We rode past them and continued down the street and I pulled the reins to stop the horse from continuing any further. We looked up on the tank and saw a dead body that was being pecked at by crows. We rode past the tank and looked up in the air as a noise flew above us. We saw the reflection of a helicopter flying past us and I ushered the horse in that direction, but when I turned the corner I saw a herd of Walkers. All of them started to shuffle after us as we rode back down the street we came from. We then came across another herd and we struggled to get away while still on the horse. Rick and I fell off the horse and started to crawl away from it as some of the Walkers began to eat the horse. I followed Rick as he crawled underneath the tank while Walkers were still trying to catch us. I pulled out my blade and stabbed their head and tried cutting off hands that were trying to reach me as Rick shot at others.

"Lori, Carl, I'm sorry." I heard him say. I saw him prepare to use the gun on himself before crawling up. I quickly followed only to have a Walker grab my foot. I screamed and Rick quickly pulled me up enough for him to use my blade to cut off its hand before we hurriedly shut the hatch. We sat down and started to breathe heavily. I saw him take a dead soldier's gun only for it to turn its head to him and growl. Rick put his gun to the Walker's head and my eyes widened.

"Rick no!" but it was too late. He used the last bullet in his Python to shoot the Walker through the head. The sound of the bullet in the enclosed space hurt our ears and it took us a minute to get our hearing back. He started to crawl up to the top hatch and looked outside for a moment before he quickly shut the hatch before they could get us. Rick and I sat in the tank and I sighed and leaned my head back on the wall of the tank. Suddenly, the radio in the tank started to make static sounds and a voice on the other end started talking.

"Hey, you two, dumbasses. Hey, you two in the tank. Cozy in there?" We weren't alone in this city after all.


	2. Guts

James and the young blonde walked through the camp towards the brunette mother with a red bucket they'd used to collect mushrooms for supper. Jack was on top of the RV with the older gentleman keeping watch over everything as he had been when they'd left.

"Any luck?" the brunette asked them.

"How do we tell if they're poison?" the blonde asked pouring the contents of the bucket into a small bowl.

"Uh, there's only one sure way I know of." The brunette told her looking inside the bucket.

"Ask Shane when he gets back?" the blonde asked.

"Yeah, you've got it." The brunette agreed before taking the bucket offered to her and standing. "Thank you. Dale, Jack, I'm heading out. Sweetheart, I want you to stay where Dale and Jack can see you, okay?" she told her son as he played with his toys alone.

"Yes, mom." Her son complied.

"You too. Don't wander too far. Stay within shouting distance. And if you see anything, holler. I'll come running." Dale told her.

"Yes, mom." Jack and the blonde heard her say sarcastically before going to the woods.

"Do you want me to come with you Mrs. Grimes?" James asked her and she turned to him with a small smile.

"Lori, James, just Lori and no. I got a gun I'll be fine." She said before walking away. James sat next to the blonde as she grabbed some leftover food for the two of them from the night before.

"Think she's meeting Shane?" the blonde asked him. He looked around and noticed their leader was missing and nodded to her. Everyone knew they were hooking up, well everyone except the kids.

"Probably Amy, some people can't go long without it." He joked making her laugh at him. Before the world went to hell a few months earlier he was just ending his high school career, which made Amy older than he was. But neither one of them cared they were friends and that's all that mattered.

* * *

><p>Rick and I were still sitting in the tank after the voice had called to us waiting for him or someone else to call us again.<p>

"Hey, are you two alive in there?" the man called to us and Rick scrambled to the CB to reply to him.

"Hello? Hello?" Rick called into it.

"There you are. You had me wondering." The man told us.

"Where are you? Outside? Can you see us right now?" Rick asked him.

"Yeah, I can see you. You're surrounded by walkers. That's the bad news." He told us.

"There's good news?" Rick asked him hopeful.

"No." he admitted and I rolled my eyes at them.

"Listen, whoever you are, I don't mind telling you we're a little concerned in here." Rick told him.

"Oh man. You should see it from over here. You'd be having a major freak-out." The man told us.

"So not helping right now." I said knowing he couldn't hear me.

"Got any advice for us?" Rick asked him.

"Yeah, I'd say make a run for it." He told us and we paused staring at the radio in stunned silence.

"That's it? "Make a run for it"?" Rick asked him.

"My way's not as dumb as it sounds. You've got eyes on the outside here. There's one geek still up on the tank but the others have climbed down and joined the feeding frenzy where the horse went down. With me so far?" the man asked us and I nodded to Rick.

"So far." Rick told him.

"Okay, the street on the other side of the tank is less crowded. If you move now while they're distracted, you stand a chance. Got ammo?" he asked us.

"In that duffel bag I dropped out there, and guns. Can we get to it?" Rick asked him.

"Forget the bag, okay? It's not an option. What do you have on you?" the man asked.

"Hang on." Rick told him. Rick picked up the Beretta 925F that he'd taken off the solder and slipped the clip out to see it full. I pulled out my knife and gun and checked the clip and looked for another. Full clip but no luck on another one. Rick moved to the soldier and searched him for another clip for the Beretta only to find a grenade. He stared at it for a moment before putting it into his pocket and joining me once again. "Yeah. Yeah. We've got two Beretta with one clip each, 15 rounds a piece.

"Make 'em count. Jump off the right side of the tank, keep going in that direction. There's an alley up the street, maybe 50 yards. Be there." He told us.

"Hey, what's your name?" Rick asked him and I gave him a look.

"Ask when we're safe." I told him.

"Have you been listening? You're running out of time." He told Rick.

"Right." Rick agreed. Rick opened the tank and I went out first to take care of the Walker on the tank. I whacked the Walker, slicing its face wide open before getting out as quickly as I could so Rick could get out. We jumped off the tank and quickly ran towards the alley shooting down any Walkers that came close to us. When we ran into the alley, Rick pointed the gun at an Asian kids head and the kid held up his arms as a sign of surrender.

"Whoa! Not dead! Come on! Come on! Back here! Come on! Come on!" The three of us ran down the alley and the kid climbed the ladder he'd led us to first before I joined him only to look down and see Rick staring at the Walkers.

"Move your ass Rick!" I shouted.

"What are you doing?! Come on!" the kid called to him and he quickly climbed up the ladder after us. "Come on, get up." We stopped on a ledge and panted looking down on our preditors. Nice moves there, Pocahontas and Clint Eastwood. You the princess and new sheriff come riding in to clean up the town?" he asked us and I gave him a small look.

"It wasn't our intention." Rick told him.

"Yeah, whatever. Yeehaw. You're still dumbasses." He told us.

"Rick. Thanks." Rick said holding his hand out for him to shake.

"Glenn. You're welcome."

"I'm Jackie. Nice to meet ya." I said nodding my head to him.

"Oh no." Glenn said looking down to see the Walkers climbing up the ladder. We looked up to the roof and saw the height we still needed to go. "The bright side: It'll be the fall that kills us. I'm a glass-half-full kind of guy."

"Lucky you." I said as we climbed up the ladder that lead to the top of the store. We made our way across the roof of one building to another crossing over an alley.

"Are you the one that barricaded the alley?" Rick asked him. Inside the alley below us we 3 maybe 4 Walkers max.

"Somebody did…" Glenn told us as we jumped over the small ledge. "I guess when the city got overrun. Whoever did it was thinking not many geeks would get through."

"Back at the tank, why'd you stick your neck out for us?" Rick asked him as we made our way to an access point to leave the roof.

"Call it foolish, naive hope that if I'm ever that far up shit creek, somebody might do the same for me." Glenn told us while opening the hatch to reveal a ladder. He dropped his bag down in the hole and climbed him before looking up at us. "Guess I'm an even bigger dumbass than you two."

"Nope, just hopeful." I told him as he climbed down. I followed Glenn and Rick followed me only to close the opening and make us crawl down in darkness. When we got to one of the floors we quickly ran to a door and climbed down some stairs as Glenn pulled out a radio.

"I'm back. Got two guests plus four geeks in the alley." Glenn called out. We went down another staircase to a door where two Walkers appeared in front of us. Two men, a black man and a Latino, came out with protective gear and baseball bats each going after one Walker. "Let's go!" the three of us made our way into the store where the two men had emerged.

"Morales, let's go!" the black man called out to the other and they followed us back in once they'd killed the Walkers. We moved to another area of the building where there were two more survivors, a blonde woman and a black woman. Rick immediately had a gun pointed in his face by the blonde.

"You son of a bitch. We ought to kill you." She told him.

"Just chill out, Andrea. Back off." The Latino, Morales, told her.

"Come on, ease up." The black woman told her.

"Ease up? You're kidding me, right? We're dead because of these stupid assholes." She said.

"Andrea, I said back the hell off." Morales told her. We all waited for a moment for her to do something. "Well, pull the trigger." She pulled the gun off him.

"We're dead… All of us… Because of you two." She told us.

"I don't understand." Rick told her.

"Look, we came into the city to scavenge supplies. You know what the key to scavenging is? Surviving! You know the key to surviving? Sneaking in and out, tiptoeing. Not shooting up the streets like it's the O.K. Corral." Morales said moving us all into the department store only for us to see the Walkers standing outside the second set of doors.

"Every geek for miles around heard you popping off rounds." The black man said.

"You just rang the dinner bell." Andrea said.

"Get the picture now?" Morales asked him. The Walkers were all trying to get in; one even had a rock to smash the glass.

"We are so getting you knives." I told him.

"Oh God. What the hell were you doing out there anyway?" Andrea asked us.

"Trying to flag the helicopter." Rick answered.

"Helicopter? Man, that's crap. Ain't no damn helicopter." The black man told him.

"You were chasing a hallucination, imagining things. It happens." The black woman covered for him.

"We saw it." I insisted making them all go quiet.

"Hey, T-Dog, try that C.B. Can you contact the others?" Morales told the black man.

"Others? The refugee center?" Rick asked hopeful.

"Yeah, the refugee center. They've got biscuits waiting at the oven for us." The black woman said sarcastically making me think there was no refugee center. T-Dog tried to get in contact with the rest of their group.

"Got no signal. Maybe the roof." T-Dog suggested when we suddenly heard gunshots going off.

"Oh no. Is that Dixon?" Andrea asked.

"What is that maniac doing?" Morales asked.

"Come on, let's go." Glenn said and we all quickly made our way up to the roof. When we arrived we saw a man shooting down from the roof at the herd of Walkers below with a sniper rifle.

"Hey, Dixon, are you crazy?!" T-Dog asked him. Dixon just laughed and continued shooting them.

"Oh jeez. " Andrea said.

"Hey! Y'all be more polite to a man with a gun! Huh? Ah! Only common sense." Dixon called to them as Rick and I separated ourselves from them. Dixon didn't seem like he was friendly with his own group let alone two strangers.

"Man, you wasting bullets we ain't even got!" T-Dog told him but he only laughed. "And you're bringing even more of them down on our ass! Man, just chill."

"Hey! Bad enough I've got this taco-bender on my ass all day. Now I'm gonna take orders from you? I don't think so, bro. That'll be the day." Dixon said to him.

""That'll be the day"? You got something you want to tell me?" T-Dog asked him.

"Hey, T-Dog man, just leave it." Morales told him.

"No." T-Dog denied.

"All right? It ain't worth it. Now Merle, just relax, okay? We've got enough trouble." Morales reminded everyone.

"You want to know the day?" Merle asked T-Dog.

"Yeah." T-Dog told him.

"I'll tell you the day, Mr. "Yo." It's the day I take orders from a nigger." Merle told him.

"Mother… " T-Dog attacked Merle who only pushed him away and started pounding on him. Rick tried to get between them but got punched in the face instead. I knelt down next to him to help him up as they continued fighting, Merle being the obvious winner.

"Hey, come on, Merle. That's enough. " Morales told him.

"Come on. Dixon!" Andrea begged.

"Whoa, cut it out, man!" Morales said after Merle punched T-Dog hard enough for the man to hit one of the pipes revealing blood.

"Stop it! Dixon, get off him! Dixon, you're gonna hurt him." Andrea shouted.

"Merle, cut it out!" Morales ordered. Merle continued to beat T-Dog until he suddenly pulled a gun on him.

"No no no, please. Please." Andrea begged and we all watched to see with Merle would do.

"Yeah! All right! We're gonna have ourselves a little powwow, huh? Talk about who's in charge. I vote me. Anybody else? Huh?" the others pulled T-Dog away from Merle as he stood up. "Democracy time, y'all. Show of hands, huh? All in favor? Huh? Come on. Let's see 'em. Oh, come on. All in favor?" slowly but surely everyone started raising their hands with the gun pointed at all of them. "Yeah. That's good. Now that means I'm the boss, right? Yeah. Anybody else? Hmm? Anybody?" Merle asked.

"Yeah." Rick said, drawing Merle's attention. As Merle turned Rick hit him in the face with the butt of the sniper Merle had been using before quickly handcuffing Merle to the pipe he'd knocked T-Dog into.

"Who the hell are you, man?!" Merle asked him.

"Officer friendly. Look here, Merle. Things are different now. There are no niggers anymore. No dumb-as-shit, inbred white-trash fools either. Only dark meat and white meat. There's us and the dead. We survive this by pulling together, not apart." Rick told him.

"Screw you, man." Merle told him.

"I can see you make a habit of missing the point." Rick told him.

"Yeah? Well, screw you twice." Merle told him and Rick pointed a gun to his temple.

"Ought to be polite to a man with a gun." Rick said coking the gun. "Only common sense." He repeated the words Merle used once before.

"You wouldn't. You're a cop." Merle told him.

"All I am anymore is a man looking for his wife and son. Anybody that gets in the way of that is gonna lose. I'll give you a moment to think about that." Rick searched his pockets for a moment before pulling out a baggie. He looked into Merle's eyes and flicked his nose. "Got some on your nose there."

"What are you gonna do? Arrest me?" Merle asked before laughing. Rick threw the drugs over the edge of the roof and that got Merle going again. "Hey! What are you doing? Man, that was my stuff! Hey! If I get loose, you'd better pray… Yeah, you hear me, you pig?! You hear me?!"

"Yeah, your voice carries." Rick said going to the edge of the roof and looking over as his right hand shook.

"You okay?" I asked him and he nodded to me before Morales joined us.

"Do you hear me, you filthy pig?!"

"You're not Atlanta P.D. Where you from?" Morales asked him.

"Up the road a ways." Rick told him, not giving any details.

"Well, officer friendly from up the road a ways, welcome to the big city." We looked out and saw nothing but Walkers before moving back to the others.

"My God, it's like Times Square down there." Andrea said.

"How's that signal?" Morales asked T-Dog who was leaning up where everyone was looking over.

"Like Dixon's brain… Weak." T-Dog said staring pointedly at Merle who just flipped him off.

"Keep trying." Morales told him.

"Why? There's nothing they can do. Not a damn thing." Andrea said moving away from the wall.

"Got some people outside the city is all. There's no refugee center. That's a pipe dream." Morales told us and I looked down at the Walkers praying that if there was a God, he wouldn't have let my father and brother into this city.

"Then she's right. We're on our own. It's up to us to find a way out." Rick told us.

"Good luck with that. These streets ain't safe in this part of town from what I hear. Ain't that right, sugar tits? Hey, honeybunch, what say you get me out of these cuffs, we go off somewhere and bump some uglies? Gonna die anyway." Merle asked Andrea who was messing with a pack.

"I'd rather." She told him before getting up and moving closer to us.

"Rug muncher. I figured as much." Merle said and I rolled my eyes.

"Is he always like this?" I asked her.

"Only when he's breathing." She told me and I sighed in annoyance.

"The streets ain't safe. Now there's an understatement." Morales said.

"What about under the streets? The sewers?" Rick asked and looked at each other.

"Oh man. Hey, Glenn, check the alley. You see any manhole covers?" Morales asked him. Glenn ran to another ledge and looked over before joining us again.

"No, must be all out on the street where the geeks are." Glenn told us.

"Maybe not. Old building like this built in the '20s… Big structures often had drainage tunnels into the sewers in case of flooding down in the subbasements." The black woman told us.

"How do you know that?" Glenn asked her.

"It's my job… was. I worked in the city zoning office." She told us. Everyone except T-Dog and Merle made our way down into the building to a point Glenn had noticed before to see if she was right.

"This is it? Are you sure?" Morales asked him.

"I really scoped this place out the other times I was here. It's the only thing in the building that goes down. But I've never gone down it. Who'd want to, right?" Glenn asked and we all looked at him. "Oh. Great."

"We'll be right behind you." Andrea told him reassuringly.

"No, you won't. Not you." Glenn told her.

"Why not me? Think I can't?" she asked him offended.

"I wasn't…" Glenn started saying before stopping again.

"Say what's on your mind." I told him.

"Look, until now I always came here by myself… In and out, grab a few things… No problem. The first time I bring a group… Everything goes to hell. No offense. If you want me to go down this gnarly hole, fine… But only if we do it my way. It's tight down there. If I run into something and have to get out quick, I don't want you all jammed up behind me getting me killed. I'll take one person…" Rick moved forward to volunteer. "Not you either. You've got Merle's gun and I've seen you shoot. I'd feel better if you were out in that store watching those doors, covering our ass. And you've got the only other guns, so you should go with him." He told Andrea and me before turning to Morales. "You be my wingman. Jacqui stays here. Something happens, yell down to us, get us back up here in a hurry."

"Okay." The black woman, Jacqui, agreed.

"Okay, everybody knows their jobs." Rick said.

"I got some med supplies from the town we were just in. I'll go take check on T-Dog and Merle then join you in the store." I told Rick as Glenn led the way down the ladder followed by Morales.

* * *

><p>When I got to the roof T-Dog was still trying the radio. I decided to check on him first since he'd been hurt the most from the fight.<p>

"Anybody out there? Hello? Anybody read? I'm hoping to hear somebody's voice 'cause I'm getting sick and tired of hearing mine." T-Dog called into the radio as I cleaned up his face. I laughed lightly before feeling his ribs. He winced at my touch.

"Yeah, well, that makes two of us." Merle agreed.

"Three." I joked with him and he chuckled before wincing in pain again. "Sorry."

"Why don't you knock that crap off? You're giving me a headache, boy." Merle said before spitting onto the roof.

"Why don't you pull your head out of your ass? Maybe your headache will go away." T-Dog retorted making Merle chuckle at him. "Try some positivity for a change. Damn."

"Not a lot of that going around." I reminded him.

"I'll tell you what… You get me out of these cuffs and I'll be all "Sammy Sunshine" positive for you. Hey, see that hacksaw over there in that toolbag? Get it for me, hmm? Make it worth your while. What do you say, man? Come on. Get me out of these things." Merle tried asking him.

"So you can beat my ass again? Or call me nigger some more?" T-Dog asked him.

"Come on now. It wasn't personal. It's just that your kind and my kind ain't meant to mix. That's all. It doesn't mean we can't… Work together, parley, as long as there's some kind of mutual gain involved. So… about that hacksaw…" Merle tried telling him.

"I guess you want me to get that rifle over there too so you can shoot that cop when he comes back up, huh?" T-Dog asked him.

"Huh." Merle said.

"Your ribs aren't broken, probably just bruised." I told T-Dog before moving to Merle.

"I didn't know you were so worried about me Hunnybuns." Merle said to me.

"I'm not. It's called being human." I said looking at his cheek and nose. "You're fine, just bruised if that." I said before heading back downstairs to Rick and Andrea.

When I got to the store I saw Andrea looking at something with a smile on her face.

"Oh."

"See something you like?" Rick asked her.

"Not me, but I know someone who would… My sister. She's still such a kid in some ways. Unicorns, dragons… She's into all that stuff. But mermaids… They rule. She loves mermaids." She told him.

"Why not take it for her then?" I asked her.

"There's a cop staring at me." She said nodding to Rick making us chuckle. "Would it be considered looting?" she asked him.

"I don't think those rules apply anymore. Do you?" he asked her. She smiled at him and pocketed the necklace. Suddenly we heard glass shattering and ran to the doors, prepared to fire only to see them still stopped by the second set of doors.

"What did you find down there?" Rick asked Glenn and Morales as they joined us.

"Not a way out." Morales told us.

"We need to find a way… And soon." Andrea said and we all moved back to the roof. Rick used some binoculars he'd found in the store to look around on the street to see if he could find something we could use.

"That construction site, those trucks… They always keep keys on hand." Rick said pointing it out to everyone.

"You'll never make it past the walkers." Morales told him.

"You got us out of that tank." Rick said turning to Glenn.

"Yeah, but they were feeding. They were distracted." Glenn reminded him.

"Can't we just distract them again?" I asked them.

"Right. Listen to them. They're onto something. A diversion, like on "Hogan's Heroes."" Merle said sarcastically.

"God. Give it a rest." Jacqui told him annoyed.

"They're drawn by sound, right?" Rick asked, going over what he'd learned about him in the short time he'd been awake.

"Right, like dogs. They hear a sound, they come." Glenn answered.

"What else?" Rick asked.

"Aside from they hear you? They see you, smell you and if they catch you, they eat you." Morales told him.

"They can tell us by smell?" Rick asked us.

"Can't you?" Glenn asked him.

"They smell dead, we don't. It's pretty distinct." Andrea told us and I could see the wheels turning in Rick head.

* * *

><p>Rick found outfits and tossed them to us as well as thick cleaning gloves.<p>

"If bad ideas were an Olympic event, this would take the gold." Glenn said talking about the plan Rick told us on our way back down to the store.

"He's right. Just stop, okay? Take some time to think this through." Morales told Rick.

"How much time? They already got through one set of doors, that glass won't hold forever." Rick reminded him as we all got dressed in the trench coats and gloves. Andrea, Glenn, Morales, and Rick went to collect one of the dead Walkers as we all waited for them to return with an ax. When they got back I handed Rich the helmet with face protection and the ax and waited for him to make the first cut into the Walker before us. Rick was about to shop him up only to stop at the last minute. He kneeled next to the Walker and searched him before pulling out a wallet. "Wayne Dunlap. Georgia license. Born in 1979. He had $28 in his pocket when he died… And a picture of a pretty girl. "With love, from Rachel." He used to be like us… Worrying about bills or the rent or the Super Bowl. If I ever find my family, I'm gonna tell them about Wayne." Rick got up and again and prepared to cut Wayne up.

"One more thing… He was an organ donor." Glenn told us. After a moment of silence, Rick started to hack away at the Walker. With every chop he made we made disgusted noises until he finally stopped and handed the helmet and ax to Morales.

"Keep chopping." Rick told him.

"I am so gonna hurl." Glenn told us.

"Later." Rick told him as Morales hacked away at the corpse. "Everybody got gloves?" he asked as Morales finished. "Don't get any on your skin or in your eyes." We all dug our gloved hands into the dead guts and applied them to Rick and Glenn.

"Oh God! Oh jeez. Oh, this is bad. This is really bad."

"Think about something else… Puppies and kittens." Rick told him as he made a face at the smell.

"Dead puppies and kittens." T-Dog said. Glenn couldn't handle that and turned to puke.

"That is just evil. What is wrong with you?" Andrea asked him.

"Next time let the cracker beat his ass." Jacqui told Rick.

"I'll help." I said giving T-Dog a look.

"I'm sorry, yo." T-Dog apologized to Glenn.

"You suck." Glenn groaned out.

"Do we smell like them?" Rick asked us.

"Oh yeah." Andrea said and I nodded in agreement. "Glenn." She showed him her gun and he just looked at her. "Just in case." Andrea moved the trench coat away from his clothes and carefully put her gun in the band of his jeans.

"If we make it back, be ready." Rick told us.

"When. I ain't dying here." I told him.

"What about Merle Dixon?" T-Dog asked him and Rick tossed the handcuff key to T-Dog.

"Give me the axe. We need… we need more guts." Rick said chopping up the body once more. Once Rick and Glenn left the store we ran up to the roof to try and follow their progress.

"Hey, what's happening, man?" Merle called to us from his spot.

"Hey, T-Dog, try that C.B." Morales ordered and T-Dog did so.

"Hey, come on. Talk to me, y'all." Merle beggedus.

"Base camp, this is T-Dog. Anybody hear me? Can anybody out there hear me?" T-Dog called onto the C.B.

"There." Morales said, spotting them with the binoculars as thunder rumbled overhead.

"That asshole is out on the street with the handcuff keys?" Merle asked. I looked at them in time to see T-Dog wave the key at Merle who just shut up and took a deep breath.

* * *

><p>At the camp, Dale, Jack and one other man was fixing the mobile home so it'd be ready to move in case of an emergency as James stood on top of it keeping watch.<p>

"Boy, that hose isn't long for this world, is it?" Dale asked the two men with him.

"No sir." The brunette man agreed.

"Where the hell are we gonna find a replacement?" Dale asked.

"Maybe the others will find something we can fix her up with." Jack offered.

"It's late. They should've been back by now." Amy said pacing not too far from the men.

"Worrying won't make it better." Dale told her. Suddenly the radio squawked to life with T-Dog's voice following suit.

"Hello, base camp! Can anybody out there hear me? Base camp, this is T-Dog. Anybody hear me?" T-Dog called out. James took the radio and answered it, hopeful that he could hear him unlike when Rick had tried earlier that day.

"Hello? Hello? Reception's bad on this end. Repeat. Repeat." James called into the radio as everyone crowded around the RV.

"Shane, is that you?" T-Dog asked not recognizing the voice on the other end.

"Is that them?" Lori asked with her son and Shane next to her.

"We're in some deep shit. We're trapped in the department store." T-Dog told them.

"He said they're trapped?" Shane asked.

"There are geeks all over the place. Hundreds of 'em. We're surrounded." T-Dog said.

"T-Dog, repeat that last. Repeat." James said into the radio, but they heard nothing.

"He said the department store." Lori said.

"I heard it too." Dale agreed.

"Shane?" Lori asked him, the question they all wanted to ask hanging in the air.

"No way. We do not go after them. We do not risk the rest of the group. Y'all know that." Shane told her.

"So we're just gonna leave her there?" Amy asked him.

"Look, Amy, I know that this is not easy…" Shane told her.

"She volunteered to go to help the rest of us." Amy reminded him.

"I know, and she knew the risks, right? See, if she's trapped, she's gone. So we just have to deal with that. There's nothing we can do." Shane told her.

"She's my sister, you son of a bitch." Amy said before walking away from him. Lori stared at him for a moment before following after Amy as thunder rumbled again.

"Amy…" Lori called after her.

"Come on. It's all right, buddy." Shane told Lori's son as they all went back to work.

* * *

><p>We watched Rick and Glenn make their way slowly to the construction site when it began to rain.<p>

"You've got to be fucking kidding me." I said staring up at the clouds.

"It's just a cloudburst. We get 'em all the time. It'll pass real quick." Morales told me.

"Better be quicker than we all hope. The scent will be washed off if it doesn't end soon. We watched as the Walkers started noticing them more and more until one of them charged at them. Rick killed it and they started running.

"Come on, come on, come on." Morales chanted silently. We watched as they made it over the fence and into the truck and drove away from us, taking the herd with them.

"They're leaving us." Andrea said sadly.

"What? What?" Merle asked.

"Where they going? Where they going?" Morales asked.

"No no, come back." Andrea begged them.

"They'll be back. Trust me, Rick wouldn't leave us." I told her.

"Those roll-up doors at the front of the store facing the street… Meet us there and be ready." We heard Glenn say over the radio. We quickly gathered our things and ran to the door of the roof.

"Come on! Let's go, let's go!" Morales shouted to us.

"Hey, you can't leave me here! I'm not fooling, man!" Merle called out. "Morales! Hey, man! Don't do this!"

"Come on." Andrea called out as she and Jacqui left the roof. I grabbed the gun from the roof and put it in the waist of my jeans.

"Hey, that's my gun. You can't leave me. Don't leave me here, you guys."

"Morales, come on!" Andrea called out.

"I'm coming! We've gotta go!" Morales said leaving the roof.

"T-Dog! Uncuff Merle and you both meet us down there!" I called as I ran off the roof behind Morales.

"Morales! You can't leave me like this, man! Hey, T-Dog. No, man. You can't leave me, man. You can't leave me here… Not like this. You can't, man. It's not human. Come on, don't do this." I heard Merle call out as I ran. In the store the Walkers were still banging on the glass trying to get in as we ran to the loading dock.

"Okay. Okay. I got it." Andrea said holding onto the chain that controlled the door.

"Shh." Morales said, silencing us as we heard something in the distance.

"What is that?" Andrea asked.

"Car?" I offered as a possibility.

"They're here! Let's go! They're in here!" T-Dog called out to us and we began to panic until we heard 4 knocks on the door.

"Let's go! Open the door!" Morales and Andrea quickly opened the door.

"We've gotta go!" T-Dog said and we handed Rick our bags before jumping in as he went back to the driver seat.

"I'm in!" Morale called out being the last person who needed to get in. Morales closed the door before the Walkers could get to us and made his way to the passenger seat.

Morales closes the back before the Walkers can get to them and the group makes their escape.

"Everyone here?" I called to them, counting head. Andrea, Rick, Morales, T-Dog, Jacqui, me… I looked to T-Dog with everyone else, waiting to know what happened.

"I dropped the damn key." He told us and I sighed before leaning back against the door.

"Where's Glenn?" Andrea asked us.

"Driving his own getaway car." Rick told us.


	3. Tell it to the Frogs

"Best not to dwell on it. Merle got left behind. Nobody's gonna be sad he didn't come back… Except maybe Daryl." Morales told us as we drove to their camp.

"Daryl?" Rick asked.

"Who's Daryl?" I asked him.

"Merle's brother." Morales told us and I leaned my head against the door. The man had family and we left him behind. How stupid could we be? We heard the car alarm behind us and watched in the mirrors and windows as a red car passed us.

"Whoo-hoo!" we heard Glenn shout out in joy.

"At least somebody's having a good day." Morales said with a smile on his face, trying to lighten our mood.

"Somebody needs to in this world." I said.

* * *

><p>At the camp, one of the men was fixing some cans around the perimeter. One of the kids had gotten to close while playing and broke the string and the man volunteered to fix it for everyone.<p>

"Jim." Jack called to the man. "Amy gave me more cans for ya." Jack and James placed the cans next to Jim.

"Thanks." Jim said and they nodded before leaving. James climbed up on the RV with Dale and the radio.

"Anything on the radio since earlier?" James asked the Dale hopeful for some good news.

"Not yet but it's still on if they call again." Dale told the boy.

"I wish my sister was here. She'd lead a group to help the others back here no matter what Shane told her. Family was always so important to her." James told Dale.

"Tell me about her." Dale told him, trying to keep the boys mind on happier times.

"She a lot older than I am cause I was adopted. A cousin of ours was pregnant and the doctors told her she would have to make a choice if it came down to her baby or her, and she chose her baby. She died in childbirth and my parents adopted me, raised me like their own for years before I started asking questions. They were very open and honest with me, but I felt betrayed and that was when my sister stepped in. She told me all about my birth mom and how close they had been. Then she told me that family isn't about blood relations to someone. It's about the connections we make with the people we surround ourselves with."

"She sounds like a bright girl." Dale said with a smile.

"She was. Top of all her classes in high school and college." James bragged making Dale chuckle.

"You never know. She could be on her way here right now." Dale said, trying to comfort the teenager next to him. Suddenly, a loud high pitched noise blared in the mountains coming closer to them.

"Hey, Dale, can you see what that is?" Jack asked Dale as he looked through the binoculars towards the source of the noise.

"Talk to me, Dale!" Shane ordered.

"I can't tell yet." Dale told them.

"Is it them? Are they back?" Amy asked him hopeful that her sister was returning to her.

"I'll be damned." Dale said quietly.

"What is it?" James asked him trying to see with his bare eyes.

"A stolen car is my guess." Dale told them. Not long later the red car pulled up to the RV and Glenn emerged with a large grin on his face. "Holy crap. Turn that damn thing off!"

"I don't know how!" Glenn admitted. That was when everyone started talking at once.

"Pop the hood, please. Pop the damn hood, please." Shane asked him.

"What?" Glenn asked him over the noise and people talking all at once.

"My sister Andrea…" Amy started asking.

"Pop the damn hood!" Shane ordered again.

"Okay okay. Yeah yeah yeah. Yeah yeah!" Glenn said sitting in the car again.

"Is she okay? Is she all right?" Amy asked as Glenn popped the hood so Shane could disconnect the alarm.

"She's okay! She's okay!" Glenn told her.

"Is she coming back?" Amy asked him.

"Yes!" Glenn answered.

"Why isn't she with you? Where is she? She's okay?" Amy fired off at him.

"Yes! Yeah, fine. Everybody is. Well, Merle not so much." Glenn told them.

"Are you crazy, driving this wailing bastard up here? Are you trying to draw every Walker for miles? " Shane asked him.

"I think we're okay." Dale told him as he and James came down from the top of the RV.

"You call being stupid okay?" Shane asked Dale.

"Well, the alarm was echoing all over these hills. Hard to pinpoint the source. I'm not arguing. I'm just saying. It wouldn't hurt you to think things through a little more carefully next time, would it?" Dale asked Glenn.

"Sorry. Got a cool car." Glenn said as the truck with the rest of the group arrived behind him.

"Come meet everybody." Morales said as Rick turned off the truck and I opened the door so everyone in the back could leave. I looked up at Rick and saw him pinch the bridge of his nose.

"Headache?" I asked moving up to him.

"Yeah, a bit." He told me.

"I got some painkillers in my bag and some water. Give me a sec and I'll get them for ya." I said going to my bag.

"Amy." Andrea said happily running to her sister.

"Andrea!" Amy shouted, meeting her older sister half way. When they reached each other they hugged each other tightly. "Oh my god! You scared the shit out of me." Morales got out of the truck and his two kids ran for him with his wife behind them.

"Papi! Daddy!" his son shouted as he ran to his father. Morales picked him up and hugged him.

"Hey. Come here, sweetie. Hey. I told you I'd be back, didn't I?" Morales asked his wife. Lori knew this was depressing her son so they both moved away from the loving family of four so she could talk to him under Shane's ever watchful eyes.

"You are a welcome sight." Dale told Morales hugging him making them both laugh. "I thought we had lost you folks for sure."

"How'd y'all get out of there anyway?" Shane asked them.

"New guy… he got us out." Glenn told him.

"New girl got some medical training to that could help." T-Dog told him.

"New guy and new girl?" Shane asked them.

"Yeah, crazy Vatos just got into town. Hey, helicopter couple! Come say hello." Morales called out and we got out of the truck. "The guy's a cop like you."

"We're not a couple." I told Morales as we made our way to the large group.

"Oh my god." Rick whispered before moving to the boy and his mother.

"Dad! Dad!" the boy called out and I smiled at the happy reunion. I noticed a familiar face close to the mother's and I stared in shock at him.

"Daddy? James?" I moved to them before breaking out into a full run to them. By the time I got to them we were all crying and holding onto each other as tightly as we could.

Survival Camp Later that night

That night we were sitting down around the embers of a camp fire telling our stories. Both Rick and I were surrounded by our families none of them wanting to let us go.

"Disoriented. I guess that comes closest. Disoriented. Fear, confusion… all those things but… Disoriented comes closest." Rick told us.

"Was that before or after the shovel knocked your happy ass out?" I joked making everyone chuckle.

"Words can be meager things. Sometimes they fall short." Dale said.

"I felt like I'd been ripped out of my life and put somewhere else. For a while I thought I was trapped in some coma dream, something I might not wake up from ever." Rick told us.

"Mom said you died." Carl told his dad.

"She had every reason to believe that. Don't you ever doubt it." Rick told him.

"When things started to get really bad, they told me at the hospital that they were gonna medevac you and the other patients to Atlanta, and it never happened." Lori told him.

"Well, I'm not surprised after Atlanta fell." Rick said.

"Yeah." Lori agreed.

"And from the look of that hospital, it got overrun." Rick said, remembering the minutes after he woke up.

"Yeah, looks don't deceive. I barely got them out, you know?" Shane told him.

"I can't tell you how grateful I am to you, Shane. I can't begin to express it." Rick told him.

"There go those words falling short again. Paltry things." Dale said.

"What about you?" James asked me. "Any exciting tales?"

"Not really. After we came across our first Walker mom and I got into the bunker and stayed there until we needed food. When we went up we came across this family and helped them out. Before long most of our supplies were out so we set out for Atlanta. A week later mom and I were doing a supply run when she got bit. I was on watch and she went into a small convenient store. It didn't make itself known until it got her. We stayed in one place long enough for her to die peacefully. Once she stopped breathing I made sure she would rise again before we moved on." I told them staring into the embers. There was silence, around our fire until a man at another fire behind us added a log to the embers.

"Hey, Ed, you want to rethink that log?" Shane asked the man.

"It's cold, man." Ed told him.

"The cold don't change the rules, does it? Keep our fires low, just embers so we can't be seen from a distance, right?" Shane asked him.

"I said it's cold. You should mind your own business for once." Ed told him. Shane got up and we all watched the interaction between him and Ed for a moment.

"Hey, Ed… Are you sure you want to have this conversation, man?" Shane asked him.

"Go on. Pull the damn thing out. Go on!" Ed shouted at the woman at his fire. She quickly stood, taking the blanket off herself, and pulled the log out of the fire.

"Christ." Shane muttered under his breath stomping the flames out from a stray ember. He then kneeled down and looked to the woman and girl.

"Hey, Carol, Sophia, how are y'all this evening?" Shane asked them.

"Fine. We're just fine." Carol told him.

"Okay." Shane said. It looked like he was wanting a different answer from her but accepted the one she gave.

"I'm sorry about the fire." Carol said knowing Ed wouldn't.

"No no no. No apology needed. Y'all have a good night, okay?" he told them.

"Thank you." Carol said before leaning back in her chair.

"I appreciate the cooperation." Shane said sarcastically to Ed before joining us again.

"Have you given any thought to Daryl Dixon? He won't be happy to hear his brother was left behind." Dale asked us.

"I'll tell him. I dropped the key. It's on me." T-Dog said.

"I cuffed him. That makes it mine." Rick said.

"Guys, it's not a competition." Glenn told them. "I don't mean to bring race into this, but it might sound better coming from a white guy." Glenn told T-Dog.

"If Daryl's like his brother then Glenn's right, T-Dog." I told him.

"I did what I did. Hell if I'm gonna hide from him." T-Dog told us.

"We could lie." Amy suggested.

"Or tell the truth." Andrea said to her before turning to the group. "Merle was out of control. Something had to be done or he'd have gotten us killed. Your husband did what was necessary. And if Merle got left behind, it is nobody's fault but Merle's."

"And that's what we tell Daryl? I don't see a rational discussion to be had from that, do you? Word to the wise… We're gonna have our hands full when he gets back from his hunt." Dale told us.

"I'm liking this Daryl less and less by the minute." I said.

"I was scared and I ran. I'm not ashamed of it." T-Dog said.

"We were all scared. We all ran. What's your point?" Andrea asked him.

"I stopped long enough to chain that door. Staircase is narrow. Maybe half a dozen geeks can squeeze against it at any one time. It's not enough to break through that… Not that chain, not that padlock. My point… Dixon's alive and he's still up there, handcuffed on that roof. That's on us." T-Dog said before getting up and walking away from the fire leaving us all with our thoughts.

Tent

When we all retired to our tents I ended up sharing one with James and Dad for now.

"Get some sleep. I'll see you in the morning." I told James.

"Love you sis." He told me.

"Love you to kid." I said giving him a smile before getting comfortable and seeing my dad watching us with a smile.

"You found us." He said simply.

"Yeah." I said.

"I knew you would, I just hoped…" he broke off looking down at the ground.

"I'm so sorry dad. I should have been the one who was in the store at the time. Not her." I said to him.

"Don't say that. I honestly don't know if your mother would have been good in this world. I don't know if she would have survived, with or without us." He told me and I nodded.

"She was doing fine until we hit the road, but food and supplies had gotten scarce." I told him.

"At least she didn't come back as a Walker. That would have been worse than her being bitten." He told me and I nodded. "You shouldn't have been the one to do that."

"It was either me or people she didn't know. I made the right choice." I told him and he nodded in understanding at my reasons.

"It's late. Get to bed." He told me turning out the light in out tent.

The next morning I woke and walked the woods quarry to clean off and change. It was still real early so no one was up yet except my dad who happened to be on watch. I ran the cold water over my skin and washed the dirt and blood off my body before changing into a pair of jeans, black combat boots, and a black tank. I walked up to camp to see people awake and moving around doing what they normally did. Pleasantries were passed around the camp as I walked by. The women had started laundry while the men were sitting on their asses. This reminded me of history classes with the Native Americans. Women did the house work and gathering while men did the hunting and protection.

"My things have changed." I said to no one.

"It's not like there's much of a choice." Amy said as she joined me in watching the camp. "We all made up the chores for everyone when we first got here."

"I get that, but still. We had equality before the dead rose and treating us like happy meals with legs." I said and she laughed.

"You gonna be the women's right advocate?" she asked me and I gave her a small smile.

"Well I'm not spending my day doing laundry and dishes. I'll help but I've gotten to use to going out on runs and hunting." I told her. We started walking to where her sister was doing their laundry.

"Then maybe you'll be the hope of all women." She said and I laughed.

"Hey, what funny?" Andrea asked us.

"Your sister thinking I'm the next women's right activist just cause I refuse to sit on my ass all day while the men do the heavy lifting." I told her.

"Well you can maybe, but the rest of us have to do the chores." Andrea told me. I smiled at her and watched as the guys started taking apart the red car Glenn had drove and joined him in watching the pieces roll by. We were soon joined by Rick who was looking better.

"Look at 'em. Vultures. Yeah, go on, strip it clean." Glenn called to them.

"Generators need every drop of fuel they can get. Got no power without it. Sorry, Glenn." Dale said walking by with a gas can.

"Thought I'd get to drive it at least a few more days." Glenn told us.

"Maybe we'll get to steal another one someday." Rick said patting him on the back and leaving.

"Who knows, it might even be more expensive than this one was." I told him before going to join my dad on top of the RV.

"Hey." I greeted sitting down.

"Hey, you sleep okay? You were up pretty early." He said.

"Yeah. Not used to sleeping past the sun being up anymore, that's all." I told him. "I've been thinking about the man we left behind in Atlanta. Merle Dixon."

"Why?" he asked me as we watched Shane and James drive back to camp with water.

"Water's here, y'all. Just a reminder to boil before use." Shane called out and they surrounded him

"It's not right leaving a man up on the roof of a building to die. I wouldn't do that to my worst enemy let alone a man I barley know." I explained.

"You're right, but no one in camp is going to go back for him and I don't want you to go alone." My dad told me.

"I thought you'd fight me more." I told him.

"It's been two months since I left you and your mom. I have no right to order you around." He told me.

"You're still my dad. You have every right, but I'm not the same little girl back on the farm." I said. Suddenly we heard someone screaming.

"Mom!" one of the kids called out.

"Carl?" Lori called to him. Everyone ran into action. My dad and I climbed off the RV and grabbed anything before running with the rest of the group.

"It's over there!" James called out.

"Dad!" Carl called out again.

"Baby!" Lori called out again.

"Mama! Mommy!" The little girl from last night, Sophia, called out.

"Rick!" Glenn tossed him a gun as they ran.

"Carl!" Lori called again. I grabbed a couple of poles from the ground and tossed one to my dad as we ran.

"Over here, Carl! Sophia! Come on, come on!" James called to the kids.

"Carl! Baby!" Lori called as we reached them.

"Mom!" I watched yhe boy run to his parents and his mother knelt down in front of him.

"You're okay?" Rick asked and he nodded.

"I've got him. I've got him." Lori told him and we continued farther.

"Nothing bit you? Nothing scratched you?" Lori asked Carl.

"No, I'm okay." He told her. The rest of us came across a Walker eating a deer carcass. The men and I surrounded it and that was when it noticed us. It started to attack us and we all hit it with the items we'd picked up on the way over. It was like one of those scenes from a high school movie with the geek being beaten by a group of jocks before Dale finally chopped off its head.

"It's the first one we've had up here. They never come this far up the mountain." Dale told us.

"Well, they're running out of food in the city, that's what." Jim reminded him. We yhen heard branchs snapping and footsteps coming our way. We all prepared for another Walker when a man with a crossbow walked into the clearing. He jumped back at seeing all of us ready to attack before we all relaxed.

"Oh, Jesus." Dale said.

"Son of a bitch. That's my deer!" The man said. I looked back at the deer to see three bolts sticking out of the carcass. "Look at it. All gnawed on by this… filthy, disease-bearing, motherless poxy bastard!" He said while kicking the Walkers body with every word.

"Calm down, son. That's not helping." Dale told him.

"What do you know about it, old man?" The man asked getting in Dale's face "Why don't you take that stupid hat and go back to "on golden pond"?" The man walked back to the deer and removed his bolts. "I've been tracking this deer for miles. Gonna drag it back to camp, cook us up some venison. What do you think? Do you think we can cut around this chewed up part right here?" He asked looking back at us.

"I would not risk that." Shane told him and he sighed.

"That's a damn shame. I got some squirrel… about a dozen or so. That'll have to do." He said motioning to the squirrels on a rope over his shoulder. Suddenly, the Walker head started to open and close its mouty.

"Oh god." Amy said and Andrea pulled her away from us.

"Come on, people. What the hell?" He asked us before shooting a bolt into the Walker's eye. "It's gotta be the brain. Don't y'all know nothing?" He asked us before going back to the camp.

"Let me guess, that's Daryl Dixon." I said and James nodded. "Yeah, I'm not going to like him at all." I said and we all went back to camp.

"Merle! Merle! Get your ugly ass out here! I got us some squirrel! Let's stew 'em up." Daryl called his brother as he put his crossbow next to one of the burnt out fires.

"Daryl, just slow up a bit. I need to talk to you." Shane told him.

"About what?" Daryl asked.

About Merle. There was a… There was a problem in Atlanta." Shane said. Daryl looked between Shane, who had manuvered himself between Daryl and the women, and us

"He dead?" Daryl asked him as he started to pace.

"We're not sure." Shane told him.

"He either is or he ain't!" Daryl shouted at us.

"No easy way to say this, so I'll just say it." Rick said moving towards Daryl.

"This isnt going to be good." I said pulling my knife out slowly after noticing Daryl's.

"Who are you?" Daryl asked him.

"Rick Grimes."

"Rick grimes, you got something you want to tell me?" Daryl asked him.

"Your brother was a danger to us all, so I handcuffed him on a roof, hooked him to a piece of metal. He's still there." Rick told him as I noticed T-Dog come back to camp with firewood.

"Hold on. Let me process this. You're saying you handcuffed my brother to a roof and you left him there?!" Daryl shouted at Rick.

"Yeah." Rick answered. Daryl threw the squirrels at Rick, who dodged them as Daryl made to attack him again. Shane dhoved him away from his friend and knocked him on his back.

"Hey!" T-Dog said dropping the wood. Daryl pulled out his knife and I moved closer to them. "Watch the knife!" Daryl attacked with the knife but I knocked his blade away from Rick as Shane came up behind him and put him in a choke hold

"Okay. Okay." Shane said.

"You'd best let me go!" Daryl warned him.

"Nah, I think it's better if I don't." Shane told him as he lowered him to the ground and I put my knife away.

"Choke hold's illegal." Daryl told him.

"You can file a complaint. Come on, man. We'll keep this up all day." Shane said.

"I'd like to have a calm discussion on this topic. Do you think we can manage that? Do you think we can manage that?" Rick asked him bent down do he could look the man in the eyes.

"Hmm?" Shane asked.

"Mmm. Yeah." Daryl said quietly and Shane let him go.

"What I did was not on a whim. Your brother does not work and play well with others." Rick told him.

"It's not Rick's fault." T-Dog said making all look at him. "I had the key. I dropped it."

"You couldn't pick it up?" Daryl asked him.

"Well, I dropped it in a drain." T-Dog explained. Daryl slowly got up.

"If it's supposed to make me feel better, it don't." Daryl said throwing dirt at T-Dog's feet.

"Well, maybe this will. Look, I chained the door to the roof… So the geeks couldn't get at him… With a padlock." T-Dog yold him.

"It's gotta count for something." Rick said. We all watched as Daryl wioed his eyes with the back of hand.

"Hell with all y'all! Just tell me where he is so's I can go get him." Daryl ordered Rick.

"He'll show you." We all turned to look Lori who was standing in front of the door to the RV. "Isn't that right?" We turned to Rick for his answer. He looked around at all of us before nodding.

"I'm going back." He confirmed. He and Daryl stared at each other for a moment before Daryl moved past him back to his crossbow and Rick went back to his tent. A little while later, Rick came out with his police uniform on. He walks past Shane.

"So that's it, huh?" I heard Shane ask him as they made their way to us. "You're just gonna walk off? Just to hell with everybody else?"

"I'm not saying to hell with anybody… Not you Shane…Lori least of all." Rick told him. I grabbed the bag I'd packed with supplies and moved to the area everyone was at.

"Tell her that." Shane said.

"She knows." Rick insisted.

"Well, look, I… I don't, okay, Rick? So could you just… Could you throw me a bone here, man? Could you just tell me why? Why would you risk your life for a douche bag like Merle Dixon?" Shane asked louder as they made their way to the group.

"Hey, choose your words more carefully." Daryl said pointing an arrow at Shane.

"No, I did. Douche bag's what I meant." Shane told Daryl before looking back to Rick. "Merle Dixon…The guy wouldn't give you a glass of water if you were dying of thirst."

"What he would or wouldn't do doesn't interest me. I can't let a man die of thirst… me. Thirst and exposure. We left him like an animal caught in a trap. That's no way for anything to die, let alone a human being." Rick said.

"So you and Daryl, that's your big plan?" Lori asked turned and looked at Glenn who quickly got the question.

"Oh, come on." Glenn said looking away from him then back.

"You know the way. You've been there before… In and out, no problem. You said so yourself. It's not fair of me to ask… I know that, but I'd feel a lot better with you along. I know she would too." Rick told him and he nodded.

"That's just great. Now you're gonna risk three men, huh?" Shane asked him

"Four." T-Dog said standing up while Daryl scoffed.

"My day just gets better and better, don't it?" He asked.

"You see anybody else here stepping up to save your brother's cracker ass?" T-Dog asked him.

"Why you?"Daryl asked him while cleaning his bolts.

"You wouldn't even begin to understand. You don't speak my language." T-Dog said.

"That's four." Dale said to Shane.

"Five." I told them. "I'm going to."

"Your dad know about this?" He asked me and I gave him a look.

"First of all, I am over the age of 18 and have been for some time now. I dont need my dad's permission to do anything. Second, this ain't the puritan days when women had to bow down and do as a man says, so deal with it." I told him.

"That's not what I was implying." He told me.

"No?" I asked him. "Then what was it?"

"She'd go even if we told her not to." My dad told Shane and the man finally backed down.

"It's not just four. You're putting every single one of us at risk. Just know that, Rick. Come on, you saw that Walker. It was here. It was in camp. They're moving out of the cities. They come back, we need every able body we've got. We need 'em here. We need 'em to protect camp." Shane said trying to convince us to stay.

"It seems to me what you really need most here are more guns." Rick told him.

"Right, the guns." Glenn said remembering the bag we'd dropped.

"Wait. What guns?" Shane asked confused.

"Six shotguns, two high-powered rifles, over a dozen handguns. I cleaned out the cage back at the station before I left. I dropped the bag in Atlanta when I got swarmed. It's just sitting there on the street, waiting to be picked up." Rick told him.

"Ammo?" Shane asked him.

"700 rounds, assorted." Rick replied.

"You went through hell to find us. You just got here and you're gonna turn around and leave?" Lori asked her husband.

"Dad, I don't want you to go." Carl told him.

"To hell with the guns. Shane is right. Merle Dixon? He's not worth one of your lives, even with guns thrown in. Tell me. Make me understand." She said standing up and moving to him.

"I owe a debt to a man I met and his little boy." She turned and looked at Carl about to say something when Rick continued talking. "Lori, if they hadn't taken me in, I'd have died. It's because of them that I made it back to you at all. They said they'd follow us to Atlanta. They'll walk into the same trap we did if I don't warn him." Rick explained to her.

"What's stopping you?" She asked him.

"The walkie-talkie, the one in the bag I dropped. He's got the other one. Our plan was to connect when they got closer." He explained.

"These are our walkies?" Shane asked him.

"Yeah." Rick answered.

"So use the CB. What's wrong with that?" Andrea asked them.

"The CB's fine. It's the walkies that suck to crap… Date back to the '70s, don't match any other bandwidth… Not even the scanners in our cars." Shane explained to her.

"I need that bag. Okay?" Rick whispered to his wife and she looked down at the ground before nodding to him.

"All right." She said, hopefully understanding. Rick turned to his boy and knelt in front of him so they were eye level.

"Okay?" he asked Carl and he nodded yes.

"Let's get everything we need then." I said and the five of us prepared to leave. Glenn and Daryl got the truck ready while Rick, T-Dog and I walked to Dale, Jim and my dad who were all working on the RV while James kept watch.

"Rumor is you have bolt cutters." Rick said to Dale.

"Maybe." Dale answered.

"Yeah, we get to that roof, though, we'll need to cut that chain and the handcuffs." T-Dog told him.

"I never like lending tools. The last time I did… And yes, I am talking about you…" Dale said pointing at T-Dog. "Let's just say your bag of guns wasn't the only bag that was dropped. My tools got left behind with Merle."

"We'll bring your tools back too. Think of the bolt cutters as an investment." Rick told him.

"Sounds like more of a gamble." Dale said moving to his toolbox. He put the tool he was using in it and grabbed the bolt cutters. He was about to hand it over when he stopped and looked at Rick.

"What do I get in return?" Dale asked him.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"How about one of those guns you bring back? My pick." Dale suggested. Rick looked at me and I shrugged my shoulders. What was one gun verses a man's life?

"Done." Rick said looking back at him.

"Dale, let's… Sweeten the deal a bit. Now that cube van of yours…" Jim said looking up at Rick.

"What about it?" Rick asked him.

"The RV's radiator hose is shot. That's a problem if we need to get somewhere and wanna get very far. And the hose on that van is just about a perfect match… Well, enough that I can make it fit." Jim explained.

"I'll tell you what… we get back, you can strip that van down to the bare metal." Rick told him. Behind us the horn on the van went off and we turned to see Daryl honking the van horn with his foot as Dale handed the bolt cutters to Rick.

"Come on, let's go!" he ordered us.

"I'm going to slap him." I muttered.

"Breathe, Jackie." My dad told me.

"Yeah, yeah." I said before hugging him. "See you later."

"Come back safe." He told me.

"Thank you." Rick said to Dale. We made our way to the van and Rick gave the bolt cutter to T-Dog as Shane made his way to us with a bag.

"Hey, Rick, got any rounds in the python?" Shane asked him as T-Dog got in the van.

"No." Rick answered.

"Last time we were on the gun range, I'm sure I wound up with a few loose rounds of yours." Shane said placing the bag on the van and digging through it. I gave Daryl and T-Dog two bags, one of med supplies and the other with food just in case.

"You and that bag… like the bottom of an old lady's purse." Rick said to Shane.

"I hate that you're doing this, man. I think that it's foolish and reckless. But if you're gonna go, you're taking bullets." Shane told him.

"I'm not sure I'd want to fire a shot in the city, not after what happened last time." Rick told him.

"That's up to you. Well… Five men, five rounds. What are the odds, huh? Well, let's just hope that… Let's just hope five is your lucky number, okay?" Shane asked handing me the bullets as Daryl helped me into the van.

"Thank you." Rick said to Shane.

"Thanks." I said to Daryl before moving further into the van.

"All right." Shane said to him. Rick got into the front with Glenn and put the bullets into his gun as Daryl closed the back door and Glenn took off as everyone else watched us go.

* * *

><p>"He'd better be okay. It's my only word on the matter." Daryl told T-Dog as the truck made its way to Atlanta.<p>

"I told you the geeks can't get at him. The only thing that's gonna get through that door is us." T-Dog told him as he wiped his mouth off with a red handkerchief.

"Why'd you bring food and shit?" Daryl asked me.

"Food just in case we get stuck here longer than what we want to be and the other shit in case Merle or anyone else needs medical attention." I told him as Glenn stopped the truck.

"We walk from here." He told us. We all got up and I handed Glenn the bag of food and I put the bag with the med supplies on my back as Daryl opened the back of the truck for us. We all got out and began walking along the railroad tracks into the city.

* * *

><p>At the Quarry, James was keeping watch as the women washed clothes with Ed watching them and Shane and Carl were trying to catch frogs. With the Walker being in camp Shane didn't want to take any chance so now everywhere someone went another person had to be on watch and two people were to be on the RV keeping watch at all times which is where Dale and Jack were now.<p>

* * *

><p>We cut through a fens and filed through to get to the city.<p>

"Merle first or guns?" Rick asked.

"Merle! We ain't even having this conversation." Daryl said.

"I agree with Daryl. Merle is the one we need to focus on right now." I told him.

"We are having this conversation." Rick told us. "You know the geography. It's your call." Rick told Glenn.

"Merle's closest. The guns would mean doubling back. Merle first." Glenn decided.

* * *

><p>At the Quarry, the woman were talking as they did their chores when they suddenly started laughing. After something Carol said they started laughing harder which drew Ed to them.<p>

"What's so funny?" He asked them.

"Just swapping war stories, Ed." Andrea told him.

"Yeah." Amy agreed as Ed went up to them.

"Problem, Ed?" Andrea asked him.

"Nothin' that concerns you. And you ought to focus on your work. This ain't no comedy club." Ed told them and James rolled his eyes at the man. He was an abusive bastard and everyone knew it. He looked away for a moment only to see Lori making her way to Shane and Carl.

"Hey, Carl, what did I tell you about not leaving Dale and Jack's sight?" she asked her son.

"But Shane said we could catch frogs, remember?" Carl asked her.

"It doesn't matter what Shane says. It matters what I say. Go on back to camp. I'll be right behind you. James, do you mind going with him?" she asked the teen. James made his way to them and shook his head.

"No. Come on, I'll race you buddy." Both boys ran back up to the RV with large smiles on their faces.

* * *

><p>We went to the building we'd been trapped in to see one female Walker still in the department store. Rick stopped us from moving before motioned to Daryl to take her out.<p>

"Damn. You are one ugly skank." Daryl said to her. He shot her through the head killing her again before pulling out the arrow.

* * *

><p>Jack looked down at the Quarry in time to see Shane grab Ed and pull him away from the women. Jack watched for a moment before getting off the RV and rushing to the Quarry. When he got down there Ed's face was a bloody mess. Jack rushed and pushed Shane off Ed.<p>

"That's enough!" Jack ordered the younger man. Shane made a move to get back at Ed and Jack watched him carefully.

"You put your hands on your wife, your little girl or anybody else in this camp one more time, I will not stop next time. Do you hear me? Do you hear me?!" Shane shouted at the man.

"Yes." Ed said.

"I'll beat you to death, Ed." Shane warned him again.

"Ed!" Carol called out.

"I'll beat you to death." Shane repeated before hitting him once more and kicking him in the stomach.

"Get back up to camp Shane!" Jack yelled at Shane who stormed off with everyone except Carol and Ed watching him warily.

"Oh God! No. God!" Carol broke free from the group of women and went to her husband's side. "Ed, I'm sorry. Oh my God. Ed, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Ed. Ed, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Ed."

* * *

><p>We reached the roof and cut through the padlock and got onto the roof with Daryl in front of everyone.<p>

"Merle! Merle!" Daryl called out rushing to his brother. We all stopped at what we saw except for Daryl who moved back and forth.

"No! No!" Daryl shouted, his voice shaking. We all stayed silent as he looked up at us angrily then back to the ground. "No!" On the ground was Dale's saw and next to it was a hand laying in dried blood and a bloody handcuff hanging from where Rick had left it. "No! No!"


	4. Vatos

Jack was with Dale on top of the RV keeping watch for Walkers when he saw him staring out into the distance.

"You okay Dale?" He asked. Dale just nodded and continued staring at the horizon. Jack followed his gaze to see Jim over in the bushes digging holes. "How long has he been there?"

"Quite a while now." Dale told him.

* * *

><p>T-Do, Glenn, Rick and I walked closer to Daryl and the severed hand when Daryl turned his crossbow on T-Dog to kill him. Rick quickly followed suit and pointed his Python at Daryl's head.<p>

"I won't hesitate. I don't care if every Walker in the city hears it." Rick told him. They stood there in silence for a moment, Daryl trying to blink back tears, before the hunter lowered his crossbow.

"You got a do-rag or something?" Daryl asked T-Dog calmly. T-Dog pulled one out of his pocket and handed it to Daryl. Daryl laid the rag on the ground. "I guess the saw blade was too dull for the handcuffs." He said picking up the hand by the pinky. "Ain't that a bitch." He wrapped the hand up and moved to Glenn and put the hand in one of the pockets. I knelt next to the blood splatters and handcuffs.

"He must have used a tourniquet. If he hadn't there'd be much more blood." I told them as Daryl started to follow a blood trail. I stood and looked at the boys behind me for a moment before following him. We followed him to the other side of the roof where we found an open door. Daryl walked in first with his crossbow at the ready.

"Merle? You in here?" He called out as we walked down the stairs. We walked into an office and Daryl shot a bolt at a Walker who was missing her lower jaw. We moved out of that office into a hallway only to fine two dead Walkers in another office. "Had enough in him to take out these two sumbitches. One handed. Toughest asshole I ever met, my brother. Feed him a hammer, he'd crap out nails." Daryl said as he reloaded his weapon.

"Any man can pass out from blood loss, no matter how tough he is." Rick said and we moved on.

* * *

><p>Back at camp Amy and Andrea walked back with tons of fish for the camp and large smiles on their faces.<p>

"Oh, baby. Will you look at that? Hey, check it out." Morales said drawing everyonds attention to them. Andrea gave him her catch and grabbed a bottle of water as Loti clapped at their accomplishment. "Ladies… Because of you my children will eat tonight. Thank you."

"Thank Dale. It's his canoe and gear." Andrea told him.

"Mom, look. Look at all the fish." Carl called to his mom. Morales moved the fish towards her and she moved away from them.

"Thank you." She said sarcastically.

"Whoa." Carl said trying to poke them.

"Yeah, whoa." Lori laughed. "Where did you two learn to do that?"

"Our dad." Amy answered.

"Can you teach me how to do that?" Carl asked them.

"Sure. I'll teach you all about nail knots and stuff." Amy told him sharing a smile with her sister. "If that's okay.

"You won't catch me arguing." Lori told her as Dale walked up behind them.

"Hey, Dale. When's the last time you oiled those line reels? They are a disgrace." Andrea told him.

"I, uh, I don't want to alarm anyone, but we may have a bit of a problem." Dale told the group. Shane, who had been sitting on the steps to the RV, walked to Dale. Dale pointed to Jim, who was still digging.

* * *

><p>"Merle!" Daryl called out as we entered the kitchen area.<p>

"We're not alone here. Remember?" Rick asked.

"Screw that. He could be bleeding out. You said so yourself." Daryl reminded him walking further into the kitchen. We saw one of the burners lit, blood on the handle and some of the pots and Merle's belt sitting on top.

"Looks like we found his tourniquet." I said motioning to the belt. Rick picked up one of the items one stove and we took a good look at the what was on it.

"What's that burned stuff?" Glenn asked.

"Skin. He cauterized the stump which is probably why he left the belt behind. He didn't need it." I said.

"Told you he was tough. Nobody can kill Merle but Merle." Daryl told us.

"Don't take that on faith. He's lost a lot of blood." Rick reminded him.

"Yeah? Didn't stop him from busting out of this death trap." Daryl said. We followed him to a busted window.

"He left the building? Why the hell would he do that?" Glenn asked.

"Why wouldn't he? He's out there alone as far as he knows, doing what he's got to do. Surviving." Daryl said moving away from the window. On the ledge of the window were bloody rags and broken glass, but I couldn't see any other sign of Merle.

"You call that surviving? Just wandering out in the streets, maybe passing out? What are his odds out there?" T-Dog asked him.

"No worse than being handcuffed and left to rot by you sorry pricks. You couldn't kill him. Ain't so worried about some dumb dead bastard." Daryl said getting in Rick's face.

"What about 1,000 dead dumb bastards?" Rick asked him. "Different story?"

"Why don't you take a tally? Do what you want. I'm gonna go get him." Daryl said going for the window only to have Rick stop him.

"Daryl, wait." Rick told him.

"Get your hands off me! You can't stop me." Daryl said as Glenn tried to quiet him.

"I don't blame you. He's family, I get that. I went through hell to find mine. I know exactly how you feel. He can't get far with that injury. We could help you check a few blocks around but only if we keep a level head." Rick told him.

"He's right you know." I told him bringing his blue-green eyes to my gray. "You won't survive the Walkers alone and angry and you can't find your brother dead. Think you can manage to remain calm for the rest of the trip? If not for you and your brother then for the rest of us. I want to get back to my family alive and not wanting to eat them."

"I could do that." Daryl agreed after a while.

"Only if we get those guns first. I'm not strolling the streets of Atlanta with just my good intentions, okay?" T-Dog asked us and I smiled at him.

"That we can do." I told him.

* * *

><p>At camp the rest of the group walked to Jim who was still digging holes.<p>

"Hey, Jim. Jim, why don't you hold up, all right? Just give me a second here, please." Shane asked him.

"What do you want?" Jim asked him finally stopping his actions.

"We're all just a little concerned, that's all." Shane told him.

"Dale says you've been out here for hours." Morales said

"So?" Jim asked.

"So why are you digging? Are you heading to China, Jim?" Shane joked.

"What does it matter? I'm not hurting anyone." Jim said as he started the digging again.

"Yeah, except maybe yourself. It's a hundred degrees today. You can't keep this up." Dale told him.

"Sure I can. Watch me." Jim told him.

"Jim, they're not gonna say it so I will." Lori said moving forward. "You're scaring people. You're scaring my son and Carol's daughter."

"They got nothing to be scared of." He told her moti9ning to the two kids with Carol. "I mean, what the hell, people? I'm out here by myself. Why don't you all just go and leave me the hell alone?"

"We think that you need to take a break, okay?" Shane asked. Why don't you go and get yourself in the shade? Some food maybe. I'll tell you what… maybe in a little bit I'll come out here and help you myself. Jim, just tell me what it's about. Why don't you just go ahead and give me that shovel?"

"Or what?" Jim asked him stopping his digging again.

"There is no or what." Shane told him. "I'm asking you. I'm coming to you and I'm asking you, please. I don't want to have to take it from you."

"And if I don't, then what? Then you're gonna beat my face in like Ed Peletier, aren't you?" Jim asked Shane and the former cop looked fown in shame. "Y'all seen his face, huh? What's left of it. He's probably only alive cause Jack pushed you away from him. See, now that's what happens when someone crosses you." Jim said picking up his digging again.

"That was different, Jim." Shane said in a warning tone.

"You weren't there." Any said coming to the man's defense. "Ed was out of control. He was hurting his wife."

"That is their marriage. That is not his." He said getting out of the hole he'd dig. "He is not judge and jury. Who voted you king boss, huh?

"Jim, I'm not here to argue with you, all right? Just give me the shovel, okay?" Shane asked him going for the shovel.

"No, no, no." Jim refused holding the shovel away from him.

"Just give me the… Jim!" Shane moved to take the shovel again but Jim pushed him back and tried to hit him with hit. Shane tackled him to the ground and tried to calm him down. "Okay, shh shh."

"You got no right!" Jim shouted at him.

"Stop. Shh." Shane said calmly.

"You got no right!" Jim repeated as Shane started putting his hands behind his back as though he was going to cuff him.

"Jim, just stop it. Hey hey hey hey." Shane said.

"Don't!" Jim ordered.

"Jim. Jim, nobody's gonna hurt you. You hear me? Shh. Jim, nobody is gonna hurt you, okay?" Shane asked him as he cuffed him.

"That's a lie. That's the biggest lie there is. I told that to my wife and my two boys. I said it 100 times. It didn't matter. They came out of nowhere. There were dozens of 'em. Just pulled 'em right out of my hands. You know, the only reason I got away was 'cause the dead were too busy eating my family." He told the group and they looked at him mortified.

* * *

><p>"You're not doing this alone." Rick told Glenn after he told us his plan.<p>

"Even I think it's a bad idea and I don't even like you much." Daryl told him.

"It's a good idea." Glenn insisted.

"And how's that?" I asked him.

"If you just hear me out. If we go out there in a group, we're slow, drawing attention. If I'm alone, I can move fast." He said drawing a map of the street on the ground and marking the tank and the bag of guns. "Look. That's the tank, five blocks from where we are now. That's the bag of guns. Here's the alley I dragged you into when we first met. That's where Daryl, Jackie and I will go. "

"Why us?" Daryl asked him.

"Your crossbow is quieter than his gun and she goes for her knife first gun second." Glenn told him before continuing telling us his plan. "While Daryl waits here in the alley, I run up the street, grab the bag."

"You got us elsewhere?" Rick asked him.

"You and T-Dog, right. You'll be in this alley here." Glenn said using an eraser to show their position.

"Two blocks away? Why?" Rick asked him.

"I may not be able to come back the same way. Walkers might cut me off. If that happens, I won't go back to Daryl and Jackie. I'll go forward instead, all the way around to that alley where you guys are. Whichever direction I go, I got you in both places to cover me. Afterwards, we'll all meet back here." Glenn said.

"Hey, kid, what'd you do before all this?" Daryl asked him.

"Delivered pizzas. Why?" Glenn asked him. Rick looked from Glenn to Daryl and I nodding his head slightly. Daryl just looked down to the ground and I nodded my head. He was right, alone he would be faster.

* * *

><p>Glenn, Daryl and I crawled down the ladder and run down the alley to hide behind a dumpster as Daryl loaded his crossbow.<p>

"You got some balls for a Chinaman." Daryl told him.

"I'm Korean." Glenn corrected him.

"Whatever." Daryl said as Glenn went into the street to get the guns. We knelt down between some trashcans and waited for Glenn to come running back. While we were waiting we heard footsteps coming our way. Daryl looked at me and I pulled out my knife before we jumped out and saw a young Mexican.

"Whoa, don't shoot me! What do you want?" he asked.

"I'm looking for my brother. He's hurt real bad. You seen him?" Daryl asked him.

"Ayúdame!" he suddenly shouted out.

"Shut up! You're gonna bring the geeks down on us. Answer me." Daryl ordered him. The boy was silent for a moment. "Answer me."

"Ayúdame! Ayúdame! Ayúdame!" The boy called out again before Daryl hit him with his crossbow and I knocked his legs out from under him. Daryl pointed his weapon at the boy again. "Help! Help!" I knelt down and covered his mouth with my hand and put my knife to his throat.

"That's enough kid. I don't feel like dying today, do you?" I asked him and he quieted down. Suddenly two other Mexicans came running down the alley and kicked us off him before they started beating on Daryl with a metal pipe as the fatter one held me back from doing anything. I stomped on the fatter one's foot but all that did was make him bend the two of us slightly.

"That's it. That's the bag, Vato. Take it! Take it!" One of them yelled. They stopped beating on Daryl as the fatter one let go of me. The fatter one ran after Glenn and they started beating on him. I ran to them and kicked the thin on in the gut before pushing him into the fat one. Daryl shot a bolt into the fat one's ass and the man cried out in pain as I kept the thin one away from Glenn. He used the metal bat and knocked me in the head before grabbing Glenn.

"Get off me! Get off me! Daryl! Jackie!" Glenn cried out as a car pulled up and they started going for it. I got up off the ground and immediately went for them only stopping to kill the Walkers around me. They were in the car and pulled away before Daryl and I could get to them and Daryl grabbed my arm pulling me back into the safety of the alley.

"Come back here, you sumbitches!" Daryl called out to them. He quickly closed the gate on the alley as Walkers tried to get in and get us. The boy they'd left behind had started to get up and Daryl immediately went to him and shoved him into the wall as Rick and T-Dog ran up to us.

"Whoa whoa whoa. Stop it." Rick ordered getting between the two men. I went up to Rick and Daryl and held the hunter back from the kid as Rick held his place between the two.

"I'm gonna kick your nuts up in your throat!" Daryl shouted at the kid as I pushed him back closer to the Walkers but not close enough to get scratched.

"Let me go." The kid ordered T-Dog.

"Chill out." T-Dog said shoving him back against the wall again.

"What happened?" Rick asked.

"They took Glenn and hurt Jackie. That little bastard and his little bastard homie friends. I'm gonna stomp your ass!" Daryl shouted to the kid.

"Stop! We're going to get him back!" I told him. He looked down at my face and what anger was in him only grew as he tried to get past me to the kid.

"Guys! Guys! We're cut off!" T-Dog noted pointing to the Walkers behind Daryl and me.

"Get to the lab. Go." Rick ordered and T-Dog took the kid and ran as Rick went for the bag of guns.

"Come on. Damn, let's go." Daryl said. Rick thought about it for a second before grabbing his hat and we all ran back into the building.

* * *

><p>Back at camp, Jim was tied to a tree to protect him from hurting anyone or himself. Shane, James and Dale came up to him with the water bucket as the kids and their mothers did some school work they had managed to keep around with them.<p>

"Jim, take some water?" Shane asked him.

"All right." Jim agreed.

"Yeah? All right. Here you go, bud." Shane gave Jim a nice long drink of the cool water.

"Pour some on my head?" Jim asked him.

"Yeah." Shane agreed as Morales walked up to them, grabbed a rock and left. "Cooling you down, huh?"

"Yeah. How long you gonna keep me like this?" Jim asked him.

"Well, yeah. Until I don't think that you're a danger to yourself or others." Shane told him and Jim looked at the two kids for a while.

"Sorry if I scared your boy and your little girl." Jim called to the mothers.

"You had sunstroke. Nobody's blaming you." Lori told him kindly.

"You're not scared now, are you?" he asked the kids.

"No sir." Sophia told him and he continued watching them as the men watched him.

"Your mama's right. Sun just cooked my head is all." Jim told Carl.

"Jim, do you know why you were digging? Can you say?" Dale asked him.

"I had a reason. Don't remember. Something I dreamt last night. Your dad was in it. You were too. You were worried about him. Can't remember the rest." Jim told them.

"You were doing all that digging cause of a dream?" James asked him like he couldn't believe his ears.

"You worried about your dad?" Jim asked Carl.

"They're not back yet." Carl revealed.

"We don't need to talk about that." Lori said rubbing her son's back in comfort.

"Your dad's a police officer, son. He helps people. Probably just came across some folks needing help, that's all. That man, he is tough as nails. I don't know him well but… I could see it in him. Am I right?" Jim asked Shane.

"Oh yeah." Shane agreed with him.

"There ain't nothing gonna stop him from getting back here to you and your mom, I promise you that." Jim told him and Lori smiled slightly before looking back down at the paper in front of her.

"All right." Shane said taking the water bucket. "Who wants to help me clean some fish, huh?"

"Sweet. Come on, Sophia." Carl said and they both ran after Shane with Dale trailing after them.

"Stay with Carol, all right?" Lori called to Carl and Carol got up to go with them before the brunette approached Jim. She was about to say something to him when he turned his head to her with a dead serious look on his face, shocking her.

"You keep your boy close. You don't ever let him out of your sight." Jim told her. She nodded in agreement and he turned his head to the surrounding woods before she left to go help clean the fish with the kids. "Your sister's coming back for you and your dad. You must all look out for each other, now more than ever." James stared at Jim before going to join his father on watch. With Ed down they were short a man and Daryl, Rick, T-Dog and Jackie being in Atlanta didn't help.

* * *

><p>"Those men you were with, we need to know where they went." Rick told the kid once we were back in the lab, Glenn's drawing of the city still on the floor with his markers.<p>

"I ain't telling you nothing." The kid told us and I rolled my eyes.

"Jesus, man. What the hell happened back there?" T-Dog asked us.

"I told you, this little turd and his douche bag friends came out of nowhere and jumped us." Daryl said as he fixed my head up. When I was hit with the bat I hadn't noticed it cut into me until Daryl told me to sit and started to dig in my bag to wrap me up.

"Man, you're the one who jumped me, puto, screaming about trying to find his brother like it's my damn fault." The kid told them.

"If you hadn't been screaming we wouldn't have jumped you." I told him.

"They took Glenn. Could have taken Merle too." Daryl said as he started pacing in front of the kid who just chuckled at him.

"Merle? What kind of hick name is that? I wouldn't name my dog Merle." The kid said. Daryl went to kick the kid in the head, but Rick held him back before pushing him away from the boy.

"Damn it, Daryl. Back off." Rick told him. Daryl went to the food pack we'd left here and pulled out the rag with Merle's hand in it.

"Want to see what happened to the last guy that pissed me off?" Daryl unwrapped the hand and tossed it in the kids lap. It took him a few seconds to realize what it was before freaking out and backing away from us. "Start with the feet this time." Daryl said holding the boy's shoulders to the wall before Rick pulled him off the kid.

"The men you were with took our friend. All we want to do is talk to them; see if we can work something out." Rick told the kid. He stared at us before nodding his head slightly.

* * *

><p>We followed the kid to where he said his crew was hiding from the Walkers.<p>

"You sure you're up for this?" Rick asked T-Dog.

"Yeah." T-Dog nodded.

"Okay." Rick said. T-Dog took a gun that had been in the bag and the bag and left us for his position.

"One wrong move, you get an arrow in the ass. Just so you know." Daryl warned the kid.

"Then your princess is gonna take that arrow out of my ass and shove it up yours. Just so you know." The kid told him and I laughed slightly at his stupidity.

"No she won't. She'll shove it right back in your ass." I said getting my gun and knife ready.

"G's gonna have fun breaking you." He said and Rick looked at him confused.

"No man has ever broken me kid, and none ever will." I said.

"G?" Rick asked him.

"Guillermo. He the man here." The kid answered the unasked question.

"Okay then. Let's go see Guillermo." Rick said cocking his gun and standing up. We followed him up to the building, my blade at the kids throat, as the doors opened up and one man walked out.

"You okay, little man?" he asked the kid.

"They're gonna cut off my feet, carnal." The kid told him.

"Cops do that?" Guillermo asked Rick.

"Not him. This redneck puto here. He cut off some dude's hand, man. He showed it to me." The kid said.

"Shut up." Daryl warned him and the fat man from earlier came out pointing his gun at Daryl.

"Hey, that's that Vato right there, homes. He shot me in the ass with an arrow. What's up, homes, huh?" the fat man asked.

"Chill, ese, chill. Chill. This true? He wants Miguelito's feet and the woman wants to slice his throat? That's pretty sick, man." Guillermo said to Rick.

"My blade's only here to make sure everything goes nice and smoothly." I told him.

"We were hoping more for a calm discussion." Rick told him.

"That hillbilly and his woman jumps Felipe's little cousin, beats on him, threatens to cut off his feet and his throat, Felipe gets an arrow in the ass and you want a calm discussion? You fascinate me." Guillermo said.

"Heat of the moment. Mistakes were made on both sides." Rick said.

"Who's that dude to you anyway? You don't look related." He said looking at all of us.

"He's one of our group, more or less. I'm sure you have a few like him." Rick said.

"You got my brother in there?" Daryl asked him.

"Sorry, we're fresh out of white boys. But I've got Asian. You interested?" Guillermo asked us.

"I have one of yours, you have one of mine. Sounds like an even trade." Rick told him.

"Don't sound even to me." He told us.

"G. Come on, man." The kid begged.

"My people got attacked. Where's the compensation for their pain and suffering? More to the point, where's my bag of guns?" he asked us.

"Guns?" Rick asked him.

"The bag Miguel saw in the street. The bag Felipe and Jorge were going back to get. That bag of guns." He explained.

"You're mistaken." Rick told him.

"I don't think so." Guillermo denied.

"About it being yours. It's my bag of guns." Rick told him.

"The bag was in the street. Anybody could come around and say it was theirs. I'm supposed to take your word? What's to stop my people from unloading on you right here and now and I take what's mine?" Guillermo asked him.

"You could do that. Or not." Rick said looking to where T-Dog was. Guillermo followed his gaze before looking back at Rick.

"Oye." On the roof two men held a man between the two of them with a bag on his head. They ripped the bag off to reveal Glenn with his mouth duck taped and hands tied behind his back. "I see two options. You come back with Miguel and my bag of guns, everybody walks. Or you come back locked and loaded, we'll see which side spills more blood." He looked to T-Dog before looking us up and down before he and his crew walked back into the warehouse.

* * *

><p>Back at our building, Rick unzipped the bag of guns and started to divide them up.<p>

"Them guns are worth more than gold. Gold won't protect your family or put food on the table. You're gonna give that up for that kid?" Daryl asked Rick.

"If I knew we'd get Glenn back, I might agree. But you think that Vato across the way is just gonna hand him over?" T-Dog asked as I started helping Rick.

"You calling G a liar?" Miguel asked him.

"Are you a part of this? You want to hold onto your teeth?" Daryl asked slapping him.

"You not stopping him from hurting the kid?" Rick asked me quietly.

"He's not killing him." I stated and he shook his head at me.

"Question is, do you trust that man's word?" T-Dog asked us.

"No, question is what are you willing to bet on it? Could be more than them guns. Could be your lives. Glenn worth that to you?" Daryl asked us.

"What life I have I owe to him. I was nobody to Glenn, just some idiot stuck in a tank. He could have walked away, but he didn't. Neither will I." Rick told them. I felt their eyes on me and I sighed.

"Leave no man behind, right?" I asked looking at Daryl. "I said we'd get him back and I plan on doing just that."

"So you're gonna hand the guns over?" Daryl asked.

"We didn't say that. There's nothing keeping you two here. You should get out, head back to camp." Rick told the other two boys.

"And tell your families what?" T-Dog asked him. Rick and I stared at the two boys and they started helping us with the guns.

"Come on, this is nuts." Miguel said. Daryl just pointed at him and he sat back down. "Just do like G says." He begged us as we loaded up

* * *

><p>When we went back to their hideout Miguel had his hands tied behind his back and was gagged. He walked with Daryl pointing a gun at back as the rest of walked with him. The doors were opened for us and Daryl pushed the kid in and we followed the two inside only to be surrounded by Guillermo and his group.<p>

"I see my guns but they're not all in the bag." Guillermo said motioning to the guns we held.

"That's because they're not yours. I thought I mentioned that." Rick said to him.

"Let's just shoot these fools right now, ese. All right? Unload on their asses, ese." Felipe told him.

"I don't think you fully appreciate the gravity of the situation." Guillermo said looking at all of us.

"No, I'm pretty clear." Rick said before lowering his gun. He pulled out a knife and cut Miguel free and pushed him to Guillermo. "You have your man. I want mine."

"I'm gonna chop up your boy. I'm gonna feed him to my dogs. They're the evilest, nastiest man-eating bitches you ever saw. I picked them up from Satan at a yard sale. I told you how it has to be. Are you woefully deaf?" Guillermo asked him while getting in his face. There seemed to be something close to desperation on the mans face.

"No, my hearing's fine. You said come locked and loaded." Rick repeated cocking his gun causing everyone else who held a gun to do the same. "Okay then, we're here."

Suddenly, an old woman comes out from behind the group and shouts for Felipe.

"Felipe!" We heard a woman call out. "Felipe!" An old woman came up to the man.

"Abuela, go back with the others… now." Felipe told her.

"Get that old lady out of the line of fire!" Daryl said as we watched her. No one wanted to open fire with her here.

"Abuela, listen to your mijo, okay? This is the not the place for you right now." Guillermo told her.

"Mr. Gilbert is having trouble breathing. He needs his asthma stuff. MMichael didn't find it. He needs his medicine." She told Felipe.

"Felipe, go take care of it, okay? And take your grandmother with you." Guillermo told him.

"¡Abuela! Ven conmigo por favor." He asked her trying to take her out of the area.

"Who are those people?" She asked coming up to us.

"Por favor, ven conmigo." Felipe asked her but she just walked up to Rick.

"Don't you take him." She told him and he lowered his gun.

"Ma'am?" Rick asked her.

"Felipe's a good boy. He has his trouble but he pulls himself together. We need him here." She told him.

"Ma'am, I'm not here to arrest your grandson." Rick told her.

"Then what do you want him for?" She asked him.

"He's… Helping us find a missing person. Fella named Glenn." Rick lied trying to get her to leave.

"The Asian boy? He's with Mr. Gilbert. Come. Come, I'll show you." She took his hand in her's and stayed leading him past Guillermo. "He needs his medicine."

"Let 'em pass." Guillermo ordered and his crew let us past them. We followed the woman outside and into a run down building. We walked in and looked around at the elderly in every room.

"Abuela, por favor. Take me to him." Felipe told her and he followed her. We continued following them looking in the rooms, seeing the elderly being taken care of by the young. We walked into the gymnasium where we found an elderly man having trouble breathing. Glenn was closer by and watched as Felipe helped the man.

"All right. All right. Nice and easy. Just breathe. Just breathe. Just let it out. Just breathe. Just relax." Felipe told the old man.

"What the hell is this?" Rick asked him.

"An asthma attack. Couldn't get his breath all of a sudden." Glenn told us.

"I thought you were being eaten by dogs, man." T-Dog told him. he turned to look behind him and we followed his gaze to see three little Chihuahuas.

"Got them from Satan?" I asked Guillermo.

"I did say at a yard sale." He told me and I nodded

"Jackie?" I heard from behind me. I turned to see who called for me only to be shocked at who it was.

"Michael?" I walked up to the blonde man and gave him a huge hug. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Last I checked I worked here." He told me with a grin his blue eyes shinning with joy. "You?"

"Rescue mission of sorts." I told him and he motioned to the others and I saw them staring at us. "Guys this is my old friend Michael. Michael this is Daryl, Rick and T-Dog." I introduced. They all gave their respective hellos before Rick turned to Guillermo.

"Could I have a word with you? You're the dumbest son of a bitch I ever met. We walked in there ready to kill every last one of you." Rick said pulling the other leader away from the large group surrounding the old man.

"Well, I'm glad it didn't go down that way." Guillermo told him.

"If it had, that blood would be on my hands." Rick said.

"Mine too. We'd have fought back. Wouldn't be the first time we've had to. Protect the food, the medicine… what's left of it. These people, the old ones… the staff took off, just left 'em here to die. Me Michael and Felipe were the only ones who stayed." Guillermo said.

"What are you, doctors?" Rick asked him.

"Michael is. Felipe's a nurse… a special care provider. Me, I'm the custodian." Guillermo said. We followed him and Michael into the office area.

"What about the rest of your crew?" Rick asked them.

"The Vatos trickle in to check on their parents, their grandparents. They see how things are and most decide to stay. It's a good thing too. We need the muscle. The people we've encountered since things fell apart, the worst kind… plunderers, the kind that take by force." Guillermo told him.

"That's not who we are." Rick said.

"How was I to know? My people got attacked and you show up with Miguel hostage… appearances." Guillermo explained.

"Guess the world changed." T-Dog said relaxing in a chair.

"No. It's the same as it ever was. The weak get taken. So we do what we can here. The Vatos work on those cars, talk about getting the old people out of the city. But most can't even get to the bathroom by themselves, still, it keeps the crew busy, and that's worth something. So we barred all the windows, welded all the doors shut except for one entrance. The Vatos, they go out, scavenge what they can to keep us going. We watch the perimeter night and day and we wait. The people here, they all look to me now. I don't even know why." Guillermo said.

"Because they can." Rick told him simply. Rick stared down at the gun in his hands before handing it to Guillermo. Rick then proceeded to divvy the guns up between the two groups.

"Mind if I come with yall?" Michael asked us. "I think it's time for a change in venue."

"Can you camp?" I asked him.

"With the best of them." I looked to the others and didn't see anyone objecting.

"Sure. Why not." I said and he smiled at me. "Get your shit together and quickly."

* * *

><p>Once Michael came back with his pack we all left the nursing home to get back to the van before dark.<p>

"Admit it, you only came back to Atlanta for the hat." Glenn asked Rick.

"Don't tell anybody." Rick told him.

"You've given away half our guns and ammo." Daryl said.

"Not nearly half." Rick said.

"For what? Bunch of old farts who are gonna die off momentarily anyhow? Seriously, how long you think they got?" Daryl asked him.

"How long do any of us?" Rick asked him.

"They have longer than we do if we don't leave this city." Michael said. We came to the spot where we parked the van only to find it missing.

"Oh my God." Glenn said in shock.

"What?" Michael asked us.

"We drove to town in a van and now..." i broke off my obvious sentence.

"Where the hell's our van?" Daryl asked.

"We left it right there. Who would take it?" Glenn asked.

"Merle." Rick said.

"He's gonna be taking some vengeance back to camp." Daryl warned us.

"Who's Merle and why is he wanting vengeance on your camp?" Michael asked me as we ran.

"He was who we came to get originally. We left him behind yesterday and he doesn't know we came back for him today." I told him. We ran as fast as we could as the day turned to night around us.

* * *

><p>Back at camp, everyone was blissfully enjoying the fish unaware of the possible danger they were in from Merle.<p>

"Pass the fish, please." Sophia asked politely.

"Here you go." Carol said handing her daughter some fish.

"Man o man, that's good. I miss this." Jack said remembering the last time his late wife had cooked fresh fish for his family.

"I've got to ask you, man. It's been driving me crazy." Morales said to Dale suddenly.

"What?" Dale asked him with a smile on his face.

"That watch." Morales said drawing everyone attention to the small device.

"What's wrong with my watch?" Dale asked him.

"I see you every day, the same time, winding that thing like a village priest saying mass." Morales said.

"I've wondered this myself." Jacqui said.

"I'm missing the point." Dale told them.

"Unless I've misread the signs, the world seems to have come to an end. At least hit a speed bump for a good long while." Jacqui said.

"But there's you every day winding that stupid watch." Morales chimed in.

"Time… it's important to keep track, isn't it? The days at least. Don't you think, Andrea? Back me up here. I like… I like what, um, a father said to son when he gave him a watch that had been handed down through generations. He said, "I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire, which will fit your individual needs no better than it did mine or my father's before me; I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you may forget it for a moment now and then and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it."" Dale told them and they were all silent pondering his words.

"You are so weird." Amy said and everyone laughed.

"It's not me. It's Faulkner. William Faulkner. Maybe my bad paraphrasing." Dale told her. Amy then got up from the fire drawing her sisters attention.

"Where are you going?" Andrea asked her.

"I have to pee. Jeez, you try to be discreet around here…" Amy said before walking away making everyone laugh once more.

"I remember when Mel, my wife, would cook something the kids and I had just brought in." Jack said staring into the fire. "She hated touching them so she'd tell James or me to clean them while Jackie was to clean herself up and get ready to cook them. Let me tell you my daughter can argue like crazy. She'd always refuse and deny before doing what she was told. Mel always said that when it came down to it our girl would survive on stubbornness alone and that any man who w wanted to be with her would have his hands full. We'd have this conversion everytime we brought in something fresh gor her to cook.

"Looks like your wife was right." Shane said remembering the fight earlier in the day with the woman.

"She can be a lot worse." James said with a smile. "There was this guy onfe, her oldest friend, wanted to go out with her. Everytime he came over she told him no or she'd refuse to say anything to him for a month. Eventually she started talking to him again."

"Why she say no?" Lori asked.

"She denies this but I think she wanted someone who could survive anything." James said. "After that the poor guy started doing survival classes, hunting classes, shit like that."

"And she still turned him down?" Andrea asked and he nodded with a smile on his face.

"She's like every other girl out there. Looking for Mr. Right." Lori said.

"We're out of toilet paper?" Amy called out before she suddenly screamed in pain. Everyone looked back to see her being bitten by a Walker. That was when the chaos stayed. Some people pulled out guns, bats, anything and everything they could to kill the Walkers while others ran away screaming.

* * *

><p>Nearby, Rick, T-Dog, Glenn, Daryl, Michael and heared the gunshots and we oaused in our running.<p>

"Oh my God." Rick said.

"Go! Go!" Glenn shouted and we ran even faster than before.

* * *

><p>Back at camp, families did their best to stay together. Jim picked up a baseball bat and crushes a Walker's skull with it, Dale picked up his rifle, Shane covered Lori and Carl, Andrea ran to Amy with Jim behind her while Jack and James protected Carol and Sophia.<p>

"I'm right here. Shane, what do we do? Shane?" Lori called to the man.

"Follow me!" Shane told her. The Walker that had attacked Amy took a bite out of her neck as Andrea ran to her screaming. Jim killed the Walker that attacked Amy and Andrea knelt over her sister.

"No! No! Oh God! Oh my God!" Andrea said.

"Help me." Amy begged her.

"Oh God, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. Andrea told her.

"Come on. Come on, stay close." Shane told Lori and Carl behind him.

"Carol!" Lori called out to the woman and the father and son brought the mother and daughter closer to them.

"Stay close!" Shane told the two men as they protected the mothers and their children. "Come on, y'all! Work your way up here!"

"Right in front of you. Shane!" Shane killed the Walker that Lori pointed out to him.

"Get to the RV! Go!" Jack yelled at the people close to him.

"Shane! Shane!" Lori said worried.

"Stay with me. Stay behind me. Morales, work up here!" Shane called to him. "Come on, make your way to the Winnebago!" At that moment, Rick, T-Dog, Daryl, Glenn, Michael and I ran into what was left of the camp and shot any Walker we saw using the guns we had in our hands. When the fight was over we made our way to what remand of our group by the RV.

"Baby!" Rick called out as my dad, brother and I checked each other over.

"Dad!" Carl called running to his dad crying.

"Carl!" Rick knelt down and held his son to him before standing with him in his arms and walking to Lori. The survivors from the fight came to us and stayed on the lookout for more of the dead to attack. We all turn need and looked at Andrea crying over Amy. Parents his their children's faces and we watched the morbid scene in front of us.

"I remember my dream now, why I dug the holes." Jim said and we all looked to see the gruesome scene of our once peaceful camp.


	5. Wildfire

Andrea kept a vigil over the body of her dead sister as everyone else made sure the dead didn't rise again. The next morning I watched as Lori trite to talk to her and got nothing before I went back to my work. The group had welcomed Michael as well as they could in light of last night.

"She still won't move?" Rick asked as he walked up to Shane, Dale, Lori, Carol and I.

"She won't even talk to us. She's been there all night. What do we do?" Lori asked.

"We let her grieve. If Amy turns we're all here." I said.

"No, we can't just leave Amy like that. We need to deal with it same as the others." Shane said.

"I'll tell her how it is." Rick said before walking up to her. "Andrea." She quickly pulled her gun on him as he lowered himself to her level.

"I know how the safety works." She reminded him.

"All right. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He said backing away from her. Once he was away from the sisters she slowly lowered her gun and turned back top look at Amy.

"Y'all can't be serious. Let that girl hamstring us? The dead girl's a time bomb." Daryl reminded us as Rick made it back to us, not that anyone needed the reminder.

"What do you suggest?" Rick asked him.

"Take the shot. Clean, in the brain from here. Hell, I can hit a turkey between the eyes from this distance." He told us.

"No." Both Lori and I said firmly.

"For God's sakes, let her be." Lori told him. Daryl scoffed at us before turning and getting back to work.

"Wake up, Jimbo. We've got some work to do." Daryl said as he walked past him to Morales, who was trying to drag one of the campers bodies to Glenn and James. Both boys watched as they dragged them man to the fire instead of where they were hoping.

"What are you guys doing? This is for geeks. Our people go over there." Glenn said pointing to where some others had been.

Daryl: What's the difference? They're all infected.

"Our people go in that row over there. We don't burn them! We bury them." Glenn told Daryl who just stared at him. "Understand? Our people go in that row over there." Daryl and Morales drug the body towards the bury row on the other side of the RV.

"You reap what you sow." Daryl said getting everyone's attention.

"You know what? Shut up, man." Morales told him.

"Y'all left my brother for dead. You had this coming." Daryl shouted at us.

"Shouldn't the same be said of Merle?" I asked him.

"What you say to me?" He asked angrily.

"If we reap what we sow then fine, but why aren't we threw ones with holes in our heads now? These people didn't deserve this." I said pointing to our dead. "The only reason Merle was even handcuffed up there was so we could at least try to get out of Atlanta alive. Besides, as far as we're aware Merle is alive. That's more than we can say for these people."

"A walker got him. A walker bit Jim." Jacqui called out. Anyone able to hold a weapon surrounded Jim.

"I'm okay. I'm okay." Jim told us.

"Show it to us. Show it to us." Daryl ordered. Jim turned and grabbed a shovel and tried to keep us back with it.

"Easy, Jim." Shane told him.

"Grab him." Daryl told th the people behind him.

"Jim, put it down. Put it down." Shane told him. While Jim was distracted, T-Dog caught him and held him as Daryl pulled up his shirt and revealed the bite.

"I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay." He kept repeating. "I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay." We sat Jim next to Andrea as we all gathered and talked about what to do.

"I say we put a pickaxe in his head and the dead girl's and be done with it." Daryl said.

"Is that what you'd want if it were you?" Shane asked him.

"Yeah, and I'd thank you while you did it." He told us.

"I hate to say it… I never thought I would… but maybe Daryl's right." Dale told us and I have him a strange look.

"Jim's not a monster, Dale, or some rabid dog." Rock said.

"I'm not suggesting…" Dale started saying but Rick interrupted him.

"He's sick. A sick man. We start down that road, where do we draw the line?" Rick asked.

"The line's pretty clear. Zero tolerance for walkers, or them to be." Daryl said.

"What if we can get him help? I heard the C.D.C. was working on a cure." Rick said.

"I heard that too. Heard a lot of things before the world went to hell." Shane told him.

"What if the C.D.C. is still up and running?" Rick asked us.

"Man, that is a stretch right there." Shane told him.

"Why? If there's any government left, any structure at all, they'd protect the C.D.C. at all costs, wouldn't they? I think it's our best shot. Shelter, protection…" Rock listed off.

"Okay, Rick, you want those things, all right? I do too, okay? Now if they exist, they're at the army base. Fort Benning." Shane told us.

"That's 100 miles in the opposite direction." Lori said.

"That is right. But it's away from the hot zone. Now listen to me. If that place is operational, it'll be heavily armed. We'd be safe there." Shane said.

"The military were on the front lines of this thing. They got overrun. We've all seen that. The C.D.C. is our best choice and Jim's only chance." Rick said.

"There is no government anymore and Rick's right, military went down at the beginning." I told them. "Either way we go could have Walkers behind the doors and we not know it until it's too late and our families are ripped from us."

"You go looking for aspirin, do what you need to do. Someone needs to have some balls to take care of this damn problem!" Daryl said going for Him with his pickaxe raised.

"Hey hey hey!" Shane shouted at Daryl as Rick cocked his gun and pointed it at Daryl's head.

"We don't kill the living." Rick said slowly.

"That's funny coming from a man who just put a gun to my head." Daryl said to Rick as Shane came between Him and him.

"We may disagree on some things, not on this. You put it down. Go on." Shane told him. Daryl threw the pickaxe down and walked away.

"Come with me." Rick said grabbing Jim's arm.

"Where are you taking me?" Jim asked him.

"Somewhere safe." Rick said before taking him in the RV with Michael begins him. I was on the side of the RV with Daryl making sure our people didn't rise. He was about to put his pickaxe in Ed's head when Carol walked up to him.

"I'll do it. He's my husband." She told him. Daryl handed her the pickaxe and she looked down at her husband. She started crying before she picked up the pickaxe and swing it down in Ed's brain.

"She's going to be someone to look out for." Daryl told me quietly as we watched her.

"Why do you say that?" I asked him.

"Look at her. She's gone crazy." He told me.

"Nah. That ain't crazy. That's grief and anger all in one." I told him. After she was done she gave Daryl back the pickaxe and went to sit next to Dale as we left to get his truck. When we got back Amy was trying to bite Andrea who was holding her away. We watched as she shot Amy in the head before stocking her face once more before getting out and wrapping and loading up the dead.

* * *

><p>After everyone wood died was loaded up, Amy included, Daryl and I made our way to Shane and Rick who'd been digging the graves Jim had started on the previous day.<p>

"I still think it's a mistake not burning these bodies. It's what we said we'd do, right? Burn 'em all, wasn't that the idea?" Daryl asked the guys as the ready of the camp made their way over.

"At first." Shane agreed.

"The Chinaman gets all emotional, says it's not the thing to do, we just follow him along? These people need to know who the hell's in charge here, what the rules are." Daryl said.

"There are no rules." Rick said.

"Well, that's a problem. We haven't had one minute to hold onto anything of our old selves. We need time to mourn and we need to bury our dead. It's what people do." Lori said. We staged a funeral for the dead and watched as friends and loved ones were laid to rest. The last one to be buried, and hardest to watch, was Amy. Dale kept trying to help the grieving sister but she wouldn't let him.

"I can do it. I can do it. I can do it! I can do it." She told him as he tried to help lower her into the grave. Once Amy was in the grave Dale helped Andrea out and we covered everyone up.

* * *

><p>After the funeral Michael and I went into the RV to check on Jim. I changed the bandage only to find it still bleeding. Michael looked at me with the silent question in his eyes and I nodded my head. His fever had risen. As I wiped Jim's forehead I looked outside top see Daryl watching me.<p>

"That's the redneck right?" Michael asked me and I nodded. "I'd be careful around him from now on." Michael told me.

"And why's that?" I asked him turning back to my work.

"He just seems unstable. Besides you two don't get along anyway. Makes camp life easier if there are less arguments." He told me and I rolled my eyes.

"If you ask me makes things interesting. Keeps people on their toes." I told him with a smile.

"You're not going to be able to change what halogens between them." Jim told him. "Trust me. They'll be thicker than thieves." I looked outside again to see Daryl gone.

"You a psychic Jim?" I asked him.

"No. I just saw it in a dream." He told me. I smiled at him as we heard Lori and Rick come in.

"How's he doing?" Rick asked.

"His fever is worse." I told him.

"You need anything?" Lori asked him.

"Uh… Water. Could use more water." Jim told her.

"I'll get some." She told him.

"Okay." Jim said.

"We'll get out of here so you two can talk." I told Rick and Michael and I left the RV to help around camp.

"What do you think they'll decide? Michael asked me.

"Either way we better pack up now. Never know when they decide to move on." I told him.

* * *

><p>In the forest, Dale and Jack did a sweep for Walkers on one side as Rick and Shane did the other.<p>

Think we'll really be safe at either the CDC or the base?" Jack asked him.

"I don't think that's up to us." Dale said.

"But if we get a say, what do you think?" Jack asked him.

"I think your daughter's right. Either way we go is a 50/50 shot in the dark." Dale told him.

"If you got a day in the final decision, where would you go?" Jack asked.

"CDC." Dale said. "Even if it's empty we can clear it out and have strong sturdy walls between us and the city." Dale said and Jack nodded in agreement. "This side's clear. Let's get back to the others." They made it back to the other two in time to see Shane pointing his gun at Rick. He dropped the gun and turned top see the two older men watching him."Jesus." Dale said and Shane chuckled.

"I know. Gonna have to start wearing reflective vests out here. Seriously. Come on, man. Come on, man, let's go. Nothing out here." Shane called to Rick before leaving with both men watching him worried for the people back at camp.

* * *

><p>Back at camp, Andrea was finally asleep in a chair and we were all gathered around where the camp fires would be as the guys came in from the forest.<p>

"I've been, uh… I've been thinking about Rick's plan." Shane told us. "Now look, there are no… There are no guarantees either way. I'll be the first one to admit that. I've known this man a long time. I trust his instincts. I say the most important thing here is we need to stay together. So those of you that agree, we leave first thing in the morning. Okay?"

* * *

><p>The next morning after everyone was packed up and ready to leave we all stood in a semicircle next to the cars as Rick and Shane explained what was going to happen.<p>

"Everybody listen up. Those of you with C.B.s, we're gonna be on channel 40. Let's keep the chatter down, okay? Now you got a problem, don't have a C.B., can't get a signal or anything at all, you're gonna hit your horn one time. That'll stop the caravan. Any questions?" Shane asked.

"We're, uh… We're… we're not going." Morales said.

"We have family in Birmingham. We want to be with our people." His wife explained.

"You go on your own, you won't have anyone to watch your back." Shane reminded him.

"We'll take the chance. I got to do what's best for my family." Morales said looking directly to Rick.

"You sure?" Rick asked him.

"We talked about it. We're sure." Morales said.

"All right. Shane." Rick and Shane pulled something out of the bag of guns and walked to Morales. We watched as Rick handed Morales a gun and Shane handed him a box of ammo.

"The box is half full." Shane told him and I heard Daryl scoff.

"Thank you all… For everything." Morales wife said as she and Lori hugged each other tightly. The group except Daryl said their goodbyes to Morales and his family.

"Channel 40 if you change your minds. All right?" Rick asked Morales.

"Yeah." The family went to their car as the group got into their vehicles.

"What makes you think our odds are any better?" Shane asked Rick as I got into the RV. "Come on. Let's go. Let's move out." Morales and his family went one way as the caravan went another once we hit the road. Dale and Glenn were in the front of the RV with Michael in the living area while Jacqui and I were in the back with Jim who cried out in pain while squeezing someone's hand every time we passed over a bump. Behind the RV was Rick driving his car with Lori in the passenger seat and Carl, Carol and Sophia in the back. Next was T-Dog and Andrea. Then Shane in his jeep. Followed by Jack and James in the two seater truck with Daryl bringing up the rear in his truck with Merle's motorcycle loaded up in back.

* * *

><p>En route to the CDC, the RV's radiator hose burst drawing everyone except Jacqui and Jim out of the vehicles.<p>

"I told you we'd never get far on that hose. I said I needed the one from the cube van." Dale told Rick.

"Can you jury-rig it?" Rick asked him.

"That's all it's been so far. It's more duct tape than hose. And I'm out of duct tape."

"I see something up ahead. A gas station if we're lucky" Shane said looking through the binoculars.

"Y'all, Jim… It's bad." Jacqui said as she ran out of the RV. "I don't think he can take anymore." She then went back into the RV and Jim.

"Hey, Rick, you want to hold down the fort? I'll drive ahead, see what I can bring back." Shane asked Rick and he agreed.

"Yeah, I'll come along too and I'll back you up." T-Dog said.

"Y'all keep your eyes open now. We'll be right back." Shane instructed as he and T-Dog climbed into a vehicle and left. I followed Rick as he went to check on Jim.

"We'll be back on the road soon." Rick told him.

"Oh no. Christ… My bones… My bones are like glass. Every little bump… God, this ride is killing me. Leave me here. I'm done. Just leave me. I want to be with my family." He told us. Rick looked back at me before sitting down next to Rick.

"They're all dead. I don't think you know what you're asking. The fever… You've been delirious more often than not." Rick told him.

"I know. Don't you think I know?" Jim asked him. Jim groaned as he tried to sit up. "I'm clear now. In five minutes I may not be. Rick, I know what I'm asking. I want this. Leave me here. Now that's on me. Okay? My decision. Not your failure." Jim told him. Rick just looked at him before walking out of the RV. "Jackie." I sat where Rick had been. "They're going to need you more than ever soon. Take care on who you trust." I nodded before leaving the RV.

* * *

><p>We waited until Shane and T-Dog came back before telling them what Jim told us. I left out what he'd told me personally. It had nothing to do with this.<p>

"It's what he says he wants." Rick said.

"And he's lucid?" Carol asked looking to me.

"Yeah, he's lucid. This is him talking not a delusion." I said.

"Back in the camp when I said Daryl might be right and you shut me down, you misunderstood. I would never go along with callously killing a man. I was just gonna suggest that we ask Jim what he wants. And I think we have an answer." Dale told Rick.

"We just leave him here? We take off? Man, I'm not sure I could live with that." Shane told Rick.

"It's not your call, either one of you." Lori told them. After it was decided, Rick and Shane carried Jim to a nearby tree.

"Yeah. That's it." Rick said and Jim groaned as they lowered him to the ground.

"Hey, another damn tree." Jim chuckled as the group came up to him.

"Hey, Jim… I mean, you know it doesn't need to be this." Shane told him.

"No. It's good. The breeze feels nice." Jim told him.

"Okay. All right." Shane sighed moving away from the man. Jacqui came up and say next to him.

"Just close your eyes, sweetie. Don't fight." She told him before kissing his cheek and moving away from him. Rick walked up to him and pulled out a gun.

"Jim, do you want this?" He asked showing him the weapon.

"No. You'll need it. I'm okay. I'm okay." Jim said and Rick moved away.

"Oh. Hey." Dale said kneeling down next to the dying man. Thanks for, uh, for fighting for us."

"Okay." The group dispersed and made their way back to the vehicles.

"Mind if I ride with you?" I asked Daryl before he got to his truck.

"Why me?" He asked.

"Cause I don't wanna be in the RV and Mt dad's truck's full and out of everyone who is sitting in a vehicle that I can get in I'd rather be in your's." I explained and he nodded.

* * *

><p>The caravan arrived outside the CDC building and everyone stepped outside of the vehicles. It had taken us a few days to reach our destination and we'd run out of food and water some time ago. We looked around the building to see the dead lying everywhere surrounded by flies.<p>

"All right, everybody. Keep moving. Go on. Stay quiet. Let's go. Okay, keep moving. Stay together." Shane whispered. We made our way quietly through the dead and the smell.

"Keep moving. Come on." Rick told us.

"Shh." Jacqui said as the chattering began to get louder.

"Carol." Lori whispered to keep her and her daughter close to her, Jack and Rick.

"Shh." Shane told her.

"Keep it together. Come on." Rick said.

"We're almost there, baby. Almost there." Lori told her son. When we got to where the doors should have been where just shutters.

"Nothing?" Shane asked as he pounded on the shutters creating an echo.

"There's nobody here." T-Dog said.

"Then why are these shutters down?" Rick asked.

"Walkers!" Daryl shouted and we all turned to see a Walker in military uniform make its way to us. Daryl quickly took it down before it could come to close but now we were all on red alert to anything else moving. "You led us into a graveyard!" Daryl shouted at Rick.

"He made a call." Shane reminded Daryl.

"It was the wrong damn call!" Daryl shouted as the children whimpered into their mother's sides.

"Just shut up. You hear? Shut up. Shut up!" Shane told Daryl.

"Daryl." I pulled his arm away from the former cops and he looked down at my face and I knew he could see my own fear at us being where we were. Daryl moved away from them and kept an eye out for anymore Walkers. "Rick, this is a dead end."

"Where are we gonna go?" Carol asked.

"Do you hear me? No blame." Shane said and I gave him a look.

"You might as well be saying it's his fault this happened." I said quietly so only Daryl and I could hear it.

"She's right. We can't be here, this close to the city after dark." Lori said to the men.

"Fort Benning, Rick… Still an option." Shane told Rick as the man checked the shutters again.

"On what? No food, no fuel. That's 100 miles." Andrea reminded him as the Walker groans could be heard coming to us.

"125. I checked the map." Glenn told her.

"Forget Fort Benning. We need answers tonight, now." Lori told them.

"We'll think of something." Rick told us.

"Come on, let's go. Let's get out of here. Let's go. Please." Shane begged him. "All right, everybody back to the cars. Let's go. Move."

"The camera… it moved." Rick said pointing to one of the cameras on the wall.

"You imagined it." Dale told him.

"It moved. It moved." Rick insisted.

"Rick, it is dead, man. It's an automated device. It's gears, okay? They're just winding down. Now come on." Shane begged him as Rick slammed on the shutters. "Man, just listen to me. Look around this place. It's dead, okay? It's dead. You need to let it go, Rick."

"Rick, there's nobody here!" Lori shouted at him.

"Rick we gotta move!" I shouted at him as the Walkers started moving in on us.

"I know you're in there. I know you can hear me." Rick called to the camera as Shane

"Everybody get back to the cars now!" Shane ordered as Rick continued to beg the camera.

"Please, we're desperate. Please help us. We have women, children, no food, hardly any gas left." Rick explained.

"Rick. There's nobody here" Lori said getting between her and the building.

"We have nowhere else to go." Rick said before pounding on the doors again.

"There's too many of them." I said as we all got ready to kill the Walkers coming closer to us. I stood between Daryl and Michael and knew this was it.

"Keep your eyes open." Shane told us.

"If you don't let us in, you're killing us! Please!" Rick continued to beg.

"Come on, buddy, let's go. Let's go." Shane said pulling his friend away.

"Please help us. You're killing us! You're killing us! You're killing us!" Rick shouted at the camera. We were just about fight our way back to the cars when the doors to the CDC opened, drowning us in a white light.


	6. TS-19

We stared into the while light until it lessened in brightness before rushing forward.

"Daryl, you cover the back." Shane ordered and he turned so he was facing the Walkers as we walked inside.

"Hello?" Rick called out. "Hello?"

"Close those doors. Watch for walkers." My dad ordered and we closed the doors behind us as we walked further into the large room.

"Hello?" Rick called out again. We heard a gun cock and we all pointed our weapons towards where we heard it coming from to see a man holding a gun on us.

"Anybody infected?" he called to us.

"One of our group was. He didn't make it." Rick told him.

"Why are you here? What do you want?" the man asked quickly.

"A chance." Rick said.

"That's asking an awful lot these days." The man told him.

"I know." Rick said and the man looked us all over.

"You all submit to a blood test. That's the price of admission." He told us.

"We can do that. You got stuff to bring in, you do it now. Once this door closes, it stays closed." He told us. We quickly went back to our vehicles careful of the Walkers and grabbed our stuff before running back into the building. The man slid a card in a card reader before speaking into it. "Vi, seal the main entrance. Kill the power up here. " The shutters closed on the other side of the doors. We were finally safe.

"Rick Grimes." Rick said holding his hand out.

"Dr. Edwin Jenner." The man introduced shaking Rick's hand. Later we all stood in an elevator moving down.

"Doctors always go around packing heat like that?" Daryl asked him.

"There were plenty left lying around. I familiarized myself. But you look harmless enough. Except you." Dr. Jenner said looking down at Carl. "I'll have to keep my eye on you." He said before chuckling. Once the elevator stopped we followed Jenner through some corridors.

"Are we underground?" Carol asked him.

"Are you claustrophobic?" He asked her.

"A little." She admitted.

"Try not to think about it." He told her before we walked into a room. "Vi, bring up the lights in the big room." The lights came on to reveal a large circular room. "Welcome to zone 5."

"Where is everybody? The other doctors, the staff?" Rick asked him.

"I'm it. It's just me here." Jenner told him.

"What about the person you were speaking with? Vi?" Lori asked him.

"Vi, say hello to our guests. Tell them... Welcome." Jenner said.

"Hello, guests. Welcome." A computerized voice said.

"I'm all that's left. I'm sorry." He told us. We moved to another room and sat down one at a time as Jenner drew our blood.

"What's the point? If we were infected, we'd all be running a fever." Andrea asked him as he drew hers.

"I've already broken every rule in the book letting you in here. Let me just at least be thorough." He said before pulling the syringe out. "All done." He told her. She stood up slowly and was about to fall over when Jacqui and I helped her.

"Ooh." Jacqui said.

"Easy does it." I told her.

"Are you okay?" Jenner asked her.

"Mmm." Andrea nodded.

"She hasn't eaten in days. None of us have." Jacqui told him. He turned and looked from us to the others as it contemplating what he should do.

* * *

><p>Later we were all laughing over wine and a hot cooked meal.<p>

"Fine." Lori said and Dale handed her the glass he was pouring the wine into.

"You know, in Italy, children have a little bit of wine with dinner. And in France." Dale informed her and she covered an empty glass.

"Well, when Carl is in Italy or France, he can have some then." Lori told him.

"What's it gonna hurt? Come on. - Come on." Rick insisted and we all laughed lightly watching her shrug her shoulders and Dale pour him a small bit of wine.

"There you are, young lad." Dale said handing him the cup. We waited for a moment with smiles on our faces as Carl tried the drink before making a face.

"Eww." He said and we all laughed at his face.

"That's my boy. That's my boy. Good boy." Lori said taking the cup and adding his wine to hers.

"Yuck. That tastes nasty." Carl said shaking his head and sticking his tongue out making us laugh more.

"Well, just stick to soda pop there, bud." Shane told him.

"Not you, Glenn." Daryl told him.

"What?" Glenn asked with a smile.

"Keep drinking, little man. I want to see how red your face can get." Daryl told him and we all laughed again.

"I'll stay and watch that." I said raising my glass to Daryl's and we clinked the two glasses.

"It seems to me we haven't thanked our host properly." Rick said and we all turned to Dr. Jenner who was sitting in a dark corner alone.

"He is more than just our host." T-Dog said.

"Hear hear!" Michael agreed.

"Here's to you, doc." My dad said raising his glass and we all cheered.

"Booyah!" Daryl said and I laughed.

"Booyah!" James copied.

"Thank you!" Rick said.

"Booyah!" T-Dog said and we all clinked our glasses.

"So when are you gonna tell us what the hell happened here, doc?" Shane asked and we all quieted down. "All the... the other doctors that were supposed to be figuring out what happened, - where are they?"

"We're celebrating, Shane. Don't need to do this now." Rick told him.

"Whoa, wait a second. This is why we're here, right? This was your move... Supposed to find all the answers. Instead we... We found him. Found one man. Why?" Shane asked.

"Well, when things got bad, a lot of people just left. Went off to be with their families. And when things got worse, when the military cordon got overrun, the rest bolted." Jenner explained to us.

"Every last one?" Shane asked him.

"No, many couldn't face walking out the door. They... opted out. There was a rash of suicides. That was a bad time." Jenner told him.

"You didn't leave. Why?" Andrea asked him.

"I just kept working. Hoping to do some good." He told her. The way he said it made it sound like he was lying.

"Dude, you are such a buzzkill, man." Glenn told Shane.

"Don't worry Glenn. We'll get you laughing like a pigtailed five year old soon." I told him and some of the people around us started laughing again much lighter than before.

* * *

><p>After dinner, Jenner led us through another corridor explaining some rules.<p>

"Most of the facility is powered down including housing, so you'll have to make do here. The couches are comfortable, but there are cots in storage if you like. There's a rec room down the hall that you kids might enjoy. Just don't plug in the video games, okay? Or anything that draws power. The same applies... If you shower, go easy on the hot water." Jenner said before walking away from us.

"Hot water?" Glenn asked looking back at the group with a smile on his face once more.

"That's what the man said." T-Dog told him with a smile and they both laughed before running to find their rooms and find the shower.

"Share a room or separate?" my dad asked me and James. My brother and I looked at each other then back to the man who'd raised us.

"Separate." We both said together before going off to find our own rooms.

* * *

><p>In the shower I stood in the hot water for a while before getting out and changing into something to sleep into. I had some long red satin pants and a red satin tank as well as a robe that matched. I'd taken these clothes from a nice big house I had passed when my mom was still alive. I walked down the corridor and Daryl poked his head out Glenn's room.<p>

"Got any shot glasses?" he asked me and I gave him a look.

"Yeah cause when the world ended I thought to bring a bar with me." I joked before shaking my head. "I have something that might work though. Give me a sec and I'll bring it back to you." I said going to my room. While on the road I'd found prescription bottles, ice trays and tablespoon measuring cups. I grabbed the cups and prescription bottles before going back to Glenn's room.

"This do?" I asked the man.

"Perfect." He told me before inviting me in his room where Glenn was sitting next to multiple wine bottles. Daryl and I sat next to him and the hunter poured us all a shot.

"Shouldn't we play a game or something?" Glenn asked us after we all took the first shot of the night.

"Don't have to but we can." I told him.

"What did you do before all this?" Glenn asked me.

"What does it matter?" I asked him. "We'll never be able to go back to that world."

"Come on. Just answer the question." Glenn said and I smiled lightly.

"I'm a farmer's daughter." I answered simply.

"Where'd you learn the medical stuff?" Glenn asked.

"I went to college then went back home." I told him.

"You spent all that money just to go back home?" Glenn asked and I poured us all another shot.

"I already knew I wouldn't be staying in a hospital, wasn't in my plans." I told him as we took another shot. I could tell that Glenn was starting to feel it cause he just couldn't stop smiling at everything that was said.

"I wanna know where you learned how to fight." Daryl told me.

"Have you met my dad? He made sure my brother and I could survive years in the woods let alone in abandoned towns." I laughed as I drank from my wine glass. We continued talking about our pasts as we kept drinking our shots and from the wine glasses in the room. When we ran out of wine we went back to the kitchen and grabbed another.

"Why are you always smiling?" Daryl asked me once Glenn was so far gone he was using an empty bottle as a mic.

"What do you mean?" I asked him. "This is a good place to be smiling. We're safe from the Walkers we have food, medicine, everything we need to survive."

"Before this, you were smiling, back at camp." He said.

"I'd just been reunited with my family. I was happy to have found them." I said and he looked back at Glenn. "I'm sorry about Merle. I should have stayed to make sure he would have been alright or unhandcuffed."

"Not your fault. Merle probably deserved to be handcuffed." Daryl told me.

"But not to be left behind. Or to have to cut off this own hand." I said.

"Not your fault." He told me and I looked back down at Glenn to see him passed out on the couch.

"Thank you." I said to Daryl with a small smile on my face.

"I'm going to go and drink more in my room. Ya comin'?" he asked me and I nodded.

"Yeah just give me a sec." I told him before he left. I covered Glenn up before making my way too Daryl's room to continue drinking. I was passing the rec room when the door slammed shut. I stated at it in confusion before putting my ear to the door and listening to the conversation happening inside.

"Yeah, but then I had y'all to think about, didn't I? I had you and Carl, and I needed to think about... Okay. No no. I had to get you guys safe to Atlanta. That's what I had to do. Just stop. If you thought for one second that he was still alive, would you have come? So I saved your life... you and your little boy's. That's what I did. Right? Okay. And if I could've traded places with him, I would have. I would trade places with him right now because... No no no. No. No no no, you... I love you. Shh shh." I heard Shane say to the other person, who I could assume was Lori.

"No. No, you're drunk." She told him and I peaked inside to see Shane holding Lori by the neck and her pushing him away but he was stronger.

"I love you." Shane told her.

"No, you're drunk." She repeated.

"And I know there were some things that say that you love me too. Because there's no way that you could've been with me the way that you were." Shane said.

"Shane. Shane. Shane! Just... Okay, stop." She begged him and I quietly made my way to the pair drawing my gun. They stayed talking at the same time making his words harder to understand but her pleas were crystal clear. She was eventually able to grab his neck and push him closer to me while scratching him. He started back to her but I cocked my gun and pointed it at his head.

"That's close enough you son of a bitch." I told him. He turned to me slightly shocked that I was there. "Leave now or there will be one less mouth to feed." I told him. He stated from me to Lori before going to the door and opening it, hitting the wall on his way out. Lori put her hands on her head an nd began sobbing hysterically. I put my weapon away and quickly moved to her. "Shhhh, Lori. I gotcha. I gotcha." I held her until she was calm enough to go back to her room without worrying her son and husband. I made my way to Daryl's room angrily and immediately started drinking from the bottle we had left.

"You okay? " he asked me.

"Shane tried to rape Lori." I told him taking another drink.

"How you know that? " he asked me.

"They were in the rec room when I was walking by." I said.

"She okay? " he asked and I nodded. "Then don't worry about it."

"Don't worry about it? How can I not? The man makes decisions for the group but the only thing he wants he can't have." I said before shaking my head. "I'm not nearly drunk enough."

"Good thing I found this then." He said holding the bottle he'd found to me. I took it and smiled.

"Why, hello Jack. Been a while since I saw you." I said staring at the liquor in my hands. We poured some shots and talked most of the night away away.

* * *

><p>The next morning, I woke to someone's arms around my waist. It took me a few minutes to remember that I'd been drinking with Daryl in his room after helping Lori get Shane off her. I peeled his arm off me and stepped out of his room quietly to mine and changed before going to the kitchen to find bottles of advil and water on the table. I took one of the waters and some pain killers before sitting down next to a miserable Glenn and starting a light conversation with everyone who was there.<p>

"Hello. Morning." Rock called out earning a few in return. Everyone was present except Daryl, Jenner and Shane

"Are you hungover? Mom said you'd be." Carl asked with small smile on his face.

"Mom is right." Rick said while sitting next to his wife.

"Mom has that annoying habit." Lori said with a smile.

"Eggs. Powdered, but... but I do 'em good." T-Dog called out coming from the area with the stove with a pan of cooled eggs and a smile. Glenn moaned making me smile at the younger man. "I bet you can't tell. Protein helps the hangover." Glenn moaned again drawing more silent laughter and the mothering from Jacqui.

"Where'd all this come from?" Rick asked Lori.

"Jenner." She answered as he tried to open the bottle.

"Could you help me, please?" He asked her making me laugh lightly.

"He thought we could use it." She said opening the bottle and handing it back to him.

"Thank you." Rick said before taking the pills.

"Some of us, at least." She said starting at Glenn with a small smile.

"Don't ever ever ever let me drink again." Glenn told us.

"So not doing that. Nice singing voice by the way." I told him and he gave me his best hungover glare.

"I remember our party days back at school. This one didn't know when to stop." Michael said smiling at the memories.

"What party days? " my dad asked and I nudged Michael who'd just say next to me.

"Now I'm never gunna hear the end of it." I joked making them laugh. "Party was quite last night until Justin Timberlake over here fell asleep. That was when Daryl and I went back to his room and continued drinking until we went to bed." I told them.

"Hey." Shane said as he walked into the room.

"Hey. Feel as bad as I do?" Rick asked his old partner as the man grabbed his food.

"Worse." Shane replied.

"The hell happened to you? Your neck?" T-Dog asked him.

"I must have done it in my sleep." He answered sitting down across from me.

"Never seen you do that before." Rick told him.

"Me neither. Not like me at all." Shane said looking to Lori. She looked up at him before quickly looking down to her food. I kicked Shane under the table causing him to look at me angrily.

"Oops. Sorry Shane didn't know you're leg was there." I lied with a smile on my face.

"Morning." Jenner called as he walked into the room. He was greeted with multiple hellos as he walked to the coffee maker.

"Doctor, I don't mean to slam you with questions first thing..." Dale said.

"But you will anyway." Jenner said turning to look at us as Daryl entered the room.

"We didn't come here for the eggs." Andrea told him bluntly.

* * *

><p>We followed him into the big room after we'd finished our breakfast per his request.<p>

"Give me playback of TS-19." Jenner called to Vi.

"Playback of TS-19." Vi repeated as the large screen came to life.

"Few people ever got a chance to see this. Very few." Jenner told us as we scattered across the room and the images loaded. What became very clear was the outline of a person's head until the brain seemed to glow out of their virtual skin.

"Is that a brain?" Carl asked him.

"An extraordinary one. Not that it matters in the end. Take us in for E.I.V." Jenner ordered.

"Enhanced internal view." The person went from standing to laying on their back and the view zoomed into the brain to show the most beautiful light show someone could ever see.

"What are those lights?" Shane asked him.

"It's a person's life... experiences, memories. It's everything. Somewhere in all that organic wiring, all those ripples of light, is you... the thing that makes you unique. And human." Jenner explained.

"You don't make sense ever?" Daryl asked him with his arms crossed over his chest.

"Those are synapses, electric impulses in the brain that carry all the messages. They determine everything a person says does or thinks from the moment of birth to the moment of death." Jenner told us.

"Beautiful." I said quietly only drawing the attention of the two men next to me, Daryl and Michael.

"Death? That's what this is, a vigil?" Rick asked Jenner moving closer to him.

"Yes. Or rather the playback of the vigil." Jenner said.

"This person died? Who?" Andrea asked him moving slightly closer to him.

"Test subject 19. Someone who was bitten and infected... And volunteered to have us record the process." Jenner told us.

"Brave person." Michael said and Jenner nodded.

"Vi, scan forward to the first event." He ordered.

"Scanning to first event." Vi repeated and the screen fast forward to a certain point in the process or turning. When the screen stopped it showed the brain was slowly turning dark with slow red lights taking over the beautiful blue.

"What is that?" Glenn asked him.

"It invades the brain like meningitis. The adrenal glands hemorrhage, the brain goes into shutdown, then the major organs. Then death. Everything you ever were or ever will be... Gone." Jenner said as we watched the brain go dark.

"Is that what happened to Jim?" Sophia asked her mother.

"Yes." Carol said honestly. I turned to my family to see them comforting one another and I had to look away. I didn't deserve their comfort. I took my mother away from them.

"They all lost somebody." I heard Lori tell Jenner and looked to see Andrea also crying.

"She lost her sister and we lost my mother." I told him and he looked at us all in understanding.

"I lost somebody too. I know how devastating it is." He told us. "Scan to the second event."

"Scanning to second event." Vi said.

"The resurrection times vary wildly. We had reports of it happening in as little as three minutes. The longest we heard of was eight hours. In the case of this patient, it was two hours, one minute... Seven seconds." Jenner told us and I gave him a curious look. Very so prebiotic time for just some random patient. We watched the dark brain in shock add red light make their way through portions of the brain.

"It restarts the brain?" Lori asked in shock.

"No, just the brain stem. Basically, it gets them up and moving." Jenner told her.

"But they're not alive?" Rick asked moving forward.

"You tell me." Jenner told him motioning to the big screen.

"It's nothing like before. Most of that brain is dark." Rock said.

"Dark, lifeless, dead. The frontal lobe, the neocortex, the human part... That doesn't come back. The you part. Just a shell driven by mindless instinct." Jenner explained. Suddenly a portion of an object could be seen at the top of the screen and a flash of light tore through the patient's brain stem.

"God. What was that?" Carol asked.

"He shot his patient in the head. Didn't you?" Andrea asked him.

"Vi, power down the main screen and the workstations." Jenner ordered avoiding the question we all knew the answer to.

"Powering down main screen and workstations."

"You have no idea what it is, do you?" Andrea asked him.

"It could be microbial, viral, parasitic, - fungal." Jenner listed.

"Or the wrath of God?" Jacqui offered.

"There is that." Jenner agreed.

"Somebody must know something. Somebody somewhere." Andrea said.

"There are others, right? Other facilities?" Carol asked him.

"There may be some. People like me." Jenner told both desperate women.

"But you don't know? How can you not know?" Rick asked him.

"Everything went down. Communications, directives... all of it. I've been in the dark for almost a month." Jenner told us.

"So it's not just here. There's nothing left anywhere? Nothing? That's what you're really saying, right?" Andrea asked angrily. Everyone was quite, watching Jenner with some small bit of hope. When he didn't say anything Andrea scoffed at him.

"Jesus." Jacqui said quietly.

"Man, I'm gonna get shit-faced drunk again." Daryl said rubbing his face worth his hands.

"I'll join you again." I told him and Michael nodded.

"Dr. Jenner, I know this has been taxing for you and I hate to ask one more question, but... That clock... It's counting down. What happens at zero?" Dale asked him. We turned to the clock to see it go down to 00:59:59

"The basement generators... they run out of fuel." Jenner said before turning and leaving us.

"And then?" Rick asked him but he didn't answer. "Vi, what happens when the power runs out?"

"When the power runs out, facility-wide decontamination will occur." Vi told us. Rick decided that he, Shane, T-Dog and Glenn would go check the generators whole the rest of us relaxed in our rooms. Daryl took a bottle of wine with him, me and Michael back to his room and we all drank while talking and laughing quietly, nothing like the night before. When I started getting hot I checked to see if the air was blowing only to find that comfort was once again gone.

"Something wrong?" Michael asked me.

"The air conditioning stopped." I told the two men in the room with me before the lights shut down add well.

"Why is the air off?" I heard Lori ask from the hallway.

"And the lights in our room?" Carol asked. Daryl got up and hung out the doorway with Michael and I behind him.

"What's going on? Why is everything turned off?" Daryl asked.

"Energy use is being prioritized." Jenner said walking past us in his white lab coat and snatching the bottle of wine we had been sharing just moments before.

"Air isn't a priority? And lights?" Dale asked and we all started following him.

"It's not up to me. Zone 5 is shutting itself down." Jenner told us.

"Hey! Hey, what the hell does that mean?" Daryl asked him as we all walked down the hallways back to the main room, the power slowly airing down around us. "Hey man, I'm talking to you. What do you mean it's shutting itself down? How can a building do anything?"

"You'd be surprised." Jenner told him. We heard multiple footsteps making their way around below us and Lori looked over the railing to find the others.

"Rick?" She cakled to him.

"Jenner, what's happening?" Rick asked him as we met up with them on the lower level.

"The system is dropping all the nonessential uses of power. It's designed to keep the computers running to the last possible second. That started as we approached the half-hour mark. Right on schedule." We looked to see the clock at 00:31:27. Jenner took a drink of the liquor in his hands and stopped on the bottom step of the small set of stairs. He offered the drink back to Daryl who snatched the drink from him spoiling some of it on the floor. "It was the French." He said before going up the steps.

"What?" Andrea asked him confused.

"They were the last ones to hold out as far as I know. While our people were bolting out the doors and committing suicide in the hallways, they stayed in the labs till the end. They thought they were close to a solution." Jenner told us.

"What happened?" JJacqui asked him.

"The same thing that's happening here. No power grid. Ran out of juice. The world runs of fossil fuel. I mean, how stupid is that?" Jenner asked going to the computers.

"Let me tell you..." Shane started saying following Jenner.

"To hell with it, Shane. I don't even care. Lori, grab our things. Everybody, get your stuff. We're getting out of here _now_!" Rick told us and we all turned to leave when alarms suddenly started blaring over us.

"What's that?" Shane asked and we all stopped to look around.

"What's that?" James repeated.

"30 minutes to decontamination." Vi said showing the countdown on the big screen.

"Doc, what's going on here?" Daryl asked him as he moved around on the platform.

"Everybody, y'all heard Rick. Get your stuff and let's go! Go now! Go! Let's go." Shane ordered.

"Come on!" Glenn called out. Suddenly the door slammed down between us and our rooms. "No. Did you just lock us in? He just locked us in!"

"We've hit the 30-minute window. I am recording." Jenner said into the computer screen.

"Carl." Lori called for her son as we made our way to Jenner again.

"Mom!" The boy called out.

"You son of a bitch." Daryl shouted at Jenner running to him.

"Shane! Jackie!" Rick called for us to stop him.

"You let us out of here!" Daryl ordered.

"No, stop. Don't!" Shane ordered Daryl as we tried to pull him away from the older man.

"You lying..." Daryl started saying before T-Dog started helping us push him back.

"No no no no!" Shane said.

"Wait, no! No, don't do it." I told him and he called down slightly.

"Hey, Jenner, open that door now." Rick ordered him.

"There's no point. Everything topside is locked down. The emergency exits are sealed." Jenner told us.

"Well, open the damn things." Daryl told him.

"That's not something I control. The computers do. I told you once that front door closed, it wouldn't open again. You heard me say that. It's better this way." Jenner told us.

"What is? What happens in 28 minutes?" Rick asked him but he just turned to his keyboard and started typing away. "What happens in 28 minutes?!" Rick asked again.

"Come on!" Daryl shouted.

"You know what this place is?! We protected the public from very nasty stuff! Weaponized smallpox! Ebola strains that could wipe out half the country! Stuff you don't want getting out! Ever!" Jenner yelled getting in our faces before sitting back down and straightening his coat. "In the event of a catastrophic power failure... in a terrorist attack, for example... H.I.T.s are deployed to prevent any organisms from getting out."

"H.I.T.s?" Rick asked him.

"Vi, define." Jenner ordered.

H.I.T.s... high-impulse thermobaric fuel-air explosives consists of a two-stage aerosol ignition that produces a blast wave of significantly greater power and duration than any other known explosive except nuclear. The vacuum-pressure effect ignites the oxygen between 5,000° and 6,000° and is used when the greatest loss of life and damage to structures is desired."

"It sets the air on fire. No pain. An end to sorrow, grief... Regret. Everything." Jenner told us as the mothers and their children began to cry.

"Open the damn door!" Daryl shouted at Jenner after throwing the liquor bottle at the door.

"Out of my way!" Shane ordered before running at the door and taking an ax to it.

"Daryl!" T-Dog threw an ax to Daryl and he began to help shame try to get us out.

"You should've left well enough alone. It would've been so much easier." Jenner told us.

"Easier for who?" Lori asked him.

"All of you. You know what's out there... A short, brutal life and an agonizing death. Your... your sister... what was her name?" Jenner asked Andrea.

"Amy." She told him.

"Amy. You know what this does. You've seen it. Is that really what you want for your wife and son?" Jenner asked Rick.

"I don't want this." Rick snarled ay him.

"Can't make a dent." Shane said leaning next to Rick on the computers.

"Those doors are designed to withstand a rocket launcher." Jenner told them.

"Well, your head ain't!" Daryl said preparing to swing the ax at Jenner only to be stopped by T-Dog, Rick, Dale, James and I.

"Whoa! Whoa! Daryl! Daryl! Just back up! Back up!" We all shouted at him.

"You do want this. Last night you said you knew it was just a matter of time before everybody you loved was dead." Jenner said to Rick and we all looked at him in shock.

"What?" I asked.

"What? You really said that? After all your big talk?" Shane asked him.

"I had to keep hope alive, didn't I?" Rick asked us.

"Do you really have no hope?" James asked him.

"There is no hope. There never was." Jenner told us.

"There's always hope. Maybe it won't be you, maybe not here, but somebody somewhere..." Rick said.

"What part of "everything is gone" do you not understand?" Andrea asked him.

"Not you too." My dad said.

"Listen to your friend. She gets it. This is what takes us down. This is our extinction event." Jenner told us.

"This is our meteor?" I asked him and he nodded. "Then it can go back to space cause we will survive this." I took Daryl's disguarded ax and started on the door again.

"This isn't right. You can't just keep us here." Carol said through her tears.

"One tiny moment... a millisecond. No pain." Jenner told her.

"My daughter doesn't deserve to die like this." Carol cried.

"Wouldn't it be kinder, more compassionate to just hold your loved ones and wait for the clock to run down?" Jenner asked us. I turned to them when I heard a gun cocked and watched as Shane made his way to Jenner.

"Shane, no!" Rick told him.

"Out of the way, Rick! Stay out of my way! Open that door or I'm gonna blow your head off. Do you hear me?!" Shane told him putting the gun in the man's face.

"Brother, brother, this is not the way you do this. We will never get out of here." Rick told him.

"Shane, you listen to him." Lori told him.

"It's too late." Shane said.

"He dies, we all..." Rick tried telling the man but Shane just shouted at Jenner. "...We all die! Shane! Shane!" Shane started shooting the computers and we all tried to stay out of his way except Rick who was able to knock him to the ground. We all watched as Rick stood over Shane prepared to got him with the but of his gun. "Are you done now? Are you done?"

"Yeah, I guess we all are." Shane told him from the ground. Rick stared at all of us for a moment.

"I think you're lying." Rick said turning to Jenner.

"What?" Jenner asked him.

"You're lying about no hope. If that were true, you'd have bolted with the rest or taken the easy way out. You didn't. You chose the hard path. Why?" Rick asked him.

"It doesn't matter." Jenner said.

"It does matter. It always matters. You stayed when others ran. Why?" Rick asked.

"Not because I wanted to. I made a promise... To her. My wife." He said pointing to the big screen.

"Test subject 19 was your wife?" Lori asked him as Daryl made his way back to the door with the other ax add he and I kept pounding on the door.

"She begged me to keep going as long as I could. How could I say no?" Jenner asked the others. "She was dying. It should've been me on that table. I wouldn't have mattered to anybody. She was a loss to the world. Hell, she ran this place. I just worked here. In our field, she was an Einstein. Me? I'm just... Edwin Jenner. She could've done something about this. Not me."

"Your wife didn't have a choice. You do. That's... that's all we want... a choice, a chance." Rick told him.

"Let us keep trying as long as we can."Lori begged him.

"I told you topside's locked down. I can't open those." Jenner told them. The door in front of Daryl and me lowered and we turned to the others.

"Come on!" Daryl called out. "Let's go!"

"Come on, let's go!" Glenn said as we waited for the others to join us.

"Come on!" My dad b said moving James in front of him.

"Move it! Move it!" I said anxious to leave this place.

"Come on, let's go!" Daryl shouted at them.

"We're gonna get out of here, Sophia." Carol told her daughter.

"There's your chance. Take it." Jenner told Rick.

"I'm grateful." Rick said shaking the other mama hand.

"The day will come when you won't be." Jenner told him before pulling him close and whispering in his ear.

"Let's go! Hey, we've got four minutes left! Come on! Let's go. Let's go." Glenn called to him. Rick made his way back to us and we started leaving when Jacqui said what we never would have thought.

"No no, I'm staying. I'm staying, sweetie." She told T-Dog.

"But that's insane!" T-Dog told her.

"No, it's completely sane. For the first time in a long time. I'm not ending up like Jim and Amy. There's no time to argue and no point, not if you want to get out. Just get out. Get out." She told us.

"Dog. Come on, man. Come on! Let's go! Let's go!" Shane said and we continued moving until we heard Andrea speak.

"I'm staying too." We heard her say.

"Andrea, no." Dale begged her. She turned from him and say down on the ground. "Just go! Go!" Dale told us and we complied.

"Come on." Rick said. After collecting our stuff we all ran up the stairs since the elevator was down with the rest of the power. When we got to the ground floor T-Dog tried the doors we'd arrived through yesterday with no luck.

"Get them doors open!" Shane told him.

"Come on!" T-Dog said trying to push the doors open before going to the key pad.

"It doesn't work!" Glenn reminded him.

"Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Try it! Try it! Try it now!" T-Dog told him.

"Jackie toss me the ax." Shane told me and I tossed him the ax as Daryl started to try getting us out.

"Come on! Come on!" My dad called to the mothers and their kids.

"Stay close, sweetheart." Carol told Sophia.

"Daryl, look out!" T-Dog shouted before he took a chair and tried breaking the window with it.

"Dog, get down! Get down!" We all moved out of the way as Shane shot the glass twice with no result. "Jesus."

"The glass won't break?" Sophia asked.

"Don't worry, we'll get out of here." James told her for comfort.

"Rick, I have something that might help." Carol said dogging in her bag.

"Carol, I don't think a nail file's gonna do it." Shane said.

"Like you're doing any better." My dad told him.

"Your first morning at camp, when I washed your uniform I found this in your pocket." She said holding the gernade out to him shakily. He took the grenade from her and rushed to the windows as we moved down the stairs.

"Look out!" Shane called out. Rick set up the grenade and dropped it by the window.

"Move your ass cowboy!" I yelled at him.

"Oh sh... Get down! Get down! Shit!" Rick said. The grenade exploded and Rick was thrown towards us as glass shattered everywhere. We ran out the broken window with Walkers coming closer to us due to the noise from the explosion. We killed as many as we could not caring about the noise as we ran to the cars we'd arrived in. "They're coming." I said with a smile as I watched Andrea and Dale climb out the window.

"Jackie let's move!" Daryl called to me and I ran to his truck and climbed in the passenger seat as he got in the driver's seat. We lowered ourselves, him on top of me, before the explosion of the CDC building. We looked out the windshield and watched the fire burn what hope we'd had only earlier in the week. Daryl started his truck and we followed the caravan towards a temporary safe place. This was what we had to do until we found a home for us all to live in peace.


End file.
